Mandelstam, Osip: Black Earth: Selected Poems and Prose

Translated by Peter France (New Directions, paperback) Publication Date: July 6, 2021 Publisher Marketing: Peter France--who has been brilliantly translating Mandelstam's work for decades--draws heavily from Mandelstam's later poetry written in Voronezh, while also including poems across the whole arc of the poet's tragically short life, from his early, symbolist work to the haunting elegies of old Petersburg to his defiant "Stalin poem." A selection of Mandelstam's prose irradiates the poetry with warmth and insight as he thinks back on his Petersburg childhood and contemplates his Jewish heritage, the sunlit qualities of Hellenism, Dante's Tuscany, and the centrality of poetry in society.