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Ilyinsky Pyotr Olegovich was born in St. Petersburg (Leningrad). Since childhood, he was torn between natural sciences and liberal arts. He graduated from Moscow State University, then received a PhD in biology. He completed his post-doctoral studies at Harvard Medical School, and in 2008-2016 he taught at Boston University. His first non-scientific publication came in 1989 in the magazine “XX century and the World”, a harbinger of Russian political reforms. He published several books in Russian: “A change in Colors” (2001), “Carving the Stone” (2002), “A Long Instance of Birth. Meditating on the History of the Ancient Rus” (2004, 2nd ed. 2017), “A Legend of Babylon” (2007), “At the Very Edge of the Forest” (2019). His novel ‘The Era of Enlightenment’ is about to be published in Moscow. Many essays, short stories and verses have been published in various Russian literary journals around the globe. He is a member of St. Petersburg Writers Union.
These English poems by Gari have the same energy and elegance as his Russian poems, and they are enriched by his multilayered, polyphonic use of the English language to express thoughts and feelings with sophistication and humor.
This new edition by Shearsman Press (UK) contains translations of Marina Tsvetaeva’s narrative poems (поэмы). 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 edtion was published by Shearsman Press (UK) in 2021.
