Three Letters from the City: The St. Petersburg Poems, 1968-98

by Nathaniel Tarn

Poetry. Translation by Julia Kunina. Nathaniel Tarn is an American poet, translator, critic, and editor. He has travelled in Russia in 1968 and 1995 and twice in 1998. "Speaking the language/ of lineages ago/ language of exile/ no longer is this our language?/ It is, it IS the language,/ but it has grown to wood, / it misses the word "soul,"/ and everything dries up/ around that absence" -- from The Names Return. Other titles by Nathaniel Tarn from SPD include I THINK THIS MAY BE EDEN, SCANDALS IN THE HOUSE OF BIRDS and MICROCOSM.

101 pages, Paperback

First published January 28, 2001

About the author

Nathaniel Tarn is an American poet, essayist, anthropologist, and translator.

Tarn was educated at Clifton College, UK and graduated in history and English from King's College, Cambridge. He returned to Paris and, after some journalism and radio work, discovered anthropology at the Musée de l’Homme, the Ecole des Hautes Etudes and the Collège de France. A Fulbright a grant took him to Yale and the University of Chicago where Robert Redfield sent him to Guatemala for his doctoral fieldwork (1951-2) at the University of Chicago. He completed this work as a graduate student at the London School of Economics (1953-8).

Tarn was a professor at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies.

He emigrated to the United States in 1970 and taught at American universities.