The Heritage of Russian Verse

Rating:
Summary: Heavy on Heritage, light on explanation
Review: This is essentially a dual language Russian/English survey of the last eight hundred years of Russian poetry, from the Lay of Igor' to early post-war period. There is no explanation of the context or stature of the various poets, and the poems selected are not among the best from particular authors in my opinon (Blok, Akhmatova, Tikhin, etc.) but there's not a lot out there competing, either. Russian poetry is very moving, classically structured and lyrical. This survey doesn't really do it justice.