Marina Tsvetaeva is acknowledged today as one of the twentieth century’s greatest poets, a masterful innovator who produced a remarkable body of work before her untimely death in 1941. This bilingual collection contains six of her acclaimed narrative poems, most translated into English for the first time.

Tsvetaeva always regarded the narrative poem as her true challenge, and she created powerful and intensely original works in this genre. They can be seen as markers of various stages in her poetic development, ranging from the early, folk-accented On a Red Steed to the lyrical-confessional Poem of the Mountain and Poem of the End to the more metaphysical later poems, An Attempt at a Room, Poem of the Mountain, a beautiful requiem for Rainer Maria Rilke, New Year’s Greetings, and Poem of the Air, a stirring celebration of Lindbergh’s transatlantic flight and the quest for the soul’s freedom. These translations were first published by Ardis in 1998 and reprinted by Overlook in 2004 and 2009. The current edition was published by Shearsman Press (UK) in 2021.