Apollo in the Snow: Selected Poems

by Aleksandr Kushner, Paul Graves (Translator), Carol Ueland (Translator)

Born in Leningrad in 1936, Aleksandr Kushner is one of the best of contemporary Russian poets. In both 1987 and 1988, Kushner was invited to the United States to recite his work in the company of his peers, John Ashbery and Derek Walcott. Writing in a society centered on social ritual and public involvement, Kushner has always celebrated the refuge of private life. His is often a sort of chamber poetry, contained and contemplative, offering unique combinations of the everyday and the mythical, of minute observation and philosophical speculation. Like Anna Akhmatova and Joseph Brodsky, Kushner is heir to the magnificent Petersburg tradition of Russian poetry: Leningrad, in both its modern and its historical visages, is a major subject as well as setting for Kushner's poems; and the forms of his verse, his use of rhyme and meter, are classical. This first selection in English of Kushner's work gathers more than sixty poems, from his debut collection of 1962 through the present, and traces the poet's development and range--which, when recording the experience of Kushner's generation, does not shy from the political.

Genres: Poetry

112 pages, Hardcover

First published January 29, 1991

Reviews

[Steven Godin · Rating 4 out of 5]

No woman that I'd met before
threw money in the fire, or ever
shuddered in sudden bouts of fever,
sheet-white, while standing at the door.
Nor, in cold concert halls or parks
—thank God—had one, somewhat excited,
just as her legs were warming slightly,
pulled a revolver from her purse.

Ridiculous! And still I wouldn't know
the fatal shadows people talk of
if those wild little shoes had walked off
instead of bringing her hello.
Cheap perfume's reek pervades the rooms;
nothing's discreet or wise about her:
she blots her teary cheeks with powder
and raves about atrocious poems.