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As I Said
by Lev Loseff
Bilingual English / Russian edition
Translator G. S. Smith
Introduced by Barry Scherr
Part of our Visible Poets series edited by Jean Boase-Beier
This substantial selection from the work of the Russian poet Lev Loseff, in his long-standing collaborator G. S. Smith's consummate translation, offers English-speaking readers the opportunity to experience its immense scope and appeal. It is difficult to overstate the richness of Loseff's work with its vast range, from close and often sardonic observation, to surreal depictions of different purgatories and hells. Although Lev Loseff lived for much of his life in the United States, teaching Russian Literature at Dartmouth College, a great many of his poems are set in a St. Petersburg / Leningrad of his memory and imagination. The city of his birth and childhood often metamorphoses into a kaleidoscopic world of reminiscences and fantasy in which the poet's vision roams among the ghosts of his past in search of meaning and understanding. The reader's own voyage through the pages of this volume will be every bit as stimulating.
When Loseff's 'prose' takes wing, the moment of take-off is extraordinarily perceptible. This may be the secret of that special inspiration you feel when you read his poetry.
His poetry is full of intellectual high-wire acts. Every poem is like a circus turn, under the big top and without a net. In poetry like this there is nothing either natural or unnatural, but only past-mastery.
978-1904614-83-8 pbk
978-1906570-11-8 hbk
978-1908376-44-2 ebk
Published March 2012
