Stolen Air: Selected Poems of Osip Mandelstam
This translation sings. Some of my favorite excerpts: "Frogs, all ooze and noise, bellvowelTheir bodies into a single aural oil." (Faith)"Better to live alluvial" (Steppes)"I might have learned to hearIn any random rotting logA tree release its rings year by slow year." (Steppes) "Blossoms rupture and rapture the air,All hover and hammer,Time intensified and time intolerable, sweetness raveling rot.It is now. It is not." (Sorrowdrawl)
