A Million Premonitions

by Viktor Sosnora, Dinara Georgeoliani (Translator), Mark Halperin (Translator)

Overview

Reaching back as far as medieval Rus and as far forward as metrical and linguistic innovation permit, Sosnora has written with a voice unique and wideranging. Historical allusion, conscious anachronism, humor, and intensity of word play dominate by turns his range of verse.

Viktor Sosnora was born in 1936 in the Crimea. He is known as one of the most consistently experimental of Russian poets, and one of the foremost translators, into Russian, of Catullus, Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe, and Allen Ginsberg.

Mark Halperin teaches at Central Washington University. His latest book of poems, The Measure of Islands, was published by Wesleyan.

Dinara Georgeoliani is a linguist and Assistant Professor of Russian at Central Washington University.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780939010769
Publisher:	Zephyr Press
Publication date:	05/01/2004
Series:	In the Grip of Strange Thoughts
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.50(d)
Language:	Russian

About the Author

Viktor Aleksandrovich Sosnora was born in 1936 in Alupka, Crimea. During World War II, Sosnora was in Leningrad at the beginning of the blockade. His poetic mentor was Nikolai Aseyev, who wrote the foreword to his first book of poetry in 1962. Sosnora has since published six more volumes of poems in Russian: Triptych, 1965; Riders, 1969; Crystal, 1977; Poems, 1977; and Moon Song, 1982. Dinara Georgeoliani was educated in Moscow and Tbilisi, Georgia. She is a linguist, with extensive experience in English/Russian translation and scholarship. She has published, in Russia, numerous articles on the history of American film. She is currently Assistant Professor at Central Washington Universitywhere she teaches in the Dept. of Foreign Languages. Mark Halperin teaches in the English Department at Central Washington University. He was a Fulbright lecturer at Moscow State Linguistic Universityin Russia, and has returned there to serve as an exchange professor at Hertzen Universityin St. Petersburg. He has published three collections of poetry, including The Measure of Islands (Wesleyan UniversityPress) and Time as Distance (New Issues).

Table of Contents

	Introduction	vii
	Boyan's Gusli	2
	Kalika	6
	Appeal	10
	Seventeen Years Later	12
	"You're leaving..."	16
	"Farewell Paris..."	18
	Letter	20
	The Summer Garden by Day	22
	"It's all over, my soul so quiet..."	24
	Poet	26
	Crow	28
	When There Is No Moon	30
	"In Childhood..."	32
	House of Hopes	34
	"I had a Magnificent Friend..."	38
	Grasshopper	42
	September	46
	Prologue	48
	Leaving the Seaside	66
	Letters from the Forest	68
	A Night About You	84
	Maiden-Fish	86
	My Life	90
	The Soldiers are Leaving	94
	In February	102
	"I don't want to be on the map of a starry night..."	108
	"Eros wouldn't rouse..."	112
	Day of Hopes	114
	August	118
	Epilogue	120