An Arrow in the Wall: Selected Poetry and Prose [Paperback]

Andrei Voznesensky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1988

The poet Andrei Voznesensky, has become not only the leading Russian poet but a writer renown around the world and in his own country he is a legend.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In one of Voznesensky's new poems he laments Russian bookstores "lined with stacks/ of monolithic published hacks." Parallels between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., "two countries . . . guiltily tying nonlove's knot," emerge in another previously untranslated lyric. Striking images, searing wit and the courage to speak out mark the Russian poet's latest output, which also includes tender emotional verses to his mother and a poem about his visit to Picasso's house in the south of France shortly before the artist's death. Selections from his previous books, Antiworlds and Nostalgia for the Present, round out the poetry in this bilingual edition. There are two prose selections: "I Am Fourteen," a telling portrait of his mentor Boris Pasternak, portrayed as an "eternal adolescent," and "O," a Fellini-like montage that rhapsodizes the sculpture of Henry Moore, one of Voznesensky's idols.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Two-thirds of the verse in this anthology by one of the USSR's most durable poets appeared in Antiworlds and The Fifth Ace (1967) and Nostalgia for the Present ( LJ 4/1/79). This edition is thus an instructive review of Voznesensky's career. The mordant and closely observed poems of the Sixties and Seventies, set in his homeland and a disorderly United States, are still his best; the more recent poems included here tend toward the sentimental. Still, the two recent autobiographical essays add valuable background, and the dual-language format is a bonus for those who wish to compare the originals with renderings by translators as diverse as Auden and Allen Ginsberg. Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Henry Holt & Co (P); First Edition edition (April 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0805007849
• ISBN-13: 978-0805007848
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,568,424 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great collection, August 22, 2008

By 

Anyechka (Rensselaer, NY United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: An Arrow in the Wall: Selected Poetry and Prose (Paperback)

It's a pity such a nice collection of poetry is now out of print, since Andrey Voznesenskiy is such a great poet, and one of Russia's finest living poets (even if my own favorite Russian poet is Yevgeniy Yevtushenko). The poems in this volume are culled from three different collections--'Antiworlds,' 'Nostalgia for the Present,' and 'Release the Cranes.' There are also two long works of prose closing out the collection, "I Am Fourteen" and "O." The former essay has always stuck in my mind, because I find it so touching and selfless how Boris Pasternak took the young Andrey under his wing, mentored him, befriended him, encouraged him, and believed in him, forming a friendship that lasted the rest of the elder poet's life, treating him like a talented equal, instead of laughing and throwing his schoolboy verses in the trash when he took that chance and wrote to his idol when he was 14 years old. I don't think that all that many established writers or poets, whatever their country of origin, would take so much personal interest in and even become close friends with a much-younger person who dreams of becoming a writer too and idolises that person.

There are so many wonderful poems in here that it's hard to know where to start, but some of the standouts include "Applefall," "Elegy for My Mother," "The More You Tear Off, the More You Keep," "Chagall's Cornflowers," "The Eternal Question," and "Nostalgia for the Present." For those who are bilingual or who are students of Russian, it's an added bonus that, except for the two prose pieces at the end, the Russian originals are printed on opposite pages from the English translations. Translation being what it is, sometimes they take some liberties to make it rhyme or sound more poetic in English; I remember choosing one of the poems in this collection for a public speaking class I took as a sophomore in college, "The Great Confrontation," and presented both the original Russian and my own translation of it, which was a bit different from the official one. There are also a few poems where he refers to his beloved mentor as Boris Leonidovich, yet the translations render that, respectively, as Pasternak ("Lament for Two Unborn Poems") and Boris Pasternak ("The Schoolboy"). That might be a small point, but it still bothers me, since that's not the form of address Russians generally use, let alone for someone who's such a dear friend. The first name-last name thing is a Western convention; Russians use the first name and patronymic as the default form of address and to show politeness and respect. Overall, though, this is a very good place to start if one is interested in exploring the works of one of Russia's best modern poets.