Written in the dark
Subtitle: five poets in the siege of Leningrad
By: Gennady Gor, Dmitry Maksimov, Sergey Rudakov, Vladimir Sterligov, Pavel Zaltsman ; edited and with an introduction by Polina Barskova ; with an afterword by Ilya Kukulin ; translated from the Russian by Anand Dibble, Ben Felker-Quinn, Ainsley Morse, Eugene Ostashevsky, Rebekah Smith, Charles Swank, Jason Wagner, Matvei Yankelevich
Contributors: Zalʹt͡sman, Pavel, 1912-1985, author; Ugly Duckling Presse
Edition: First edition.
Series: Eastern European Poets Series -- #38; Eastern European poets series -- #38.
Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse
Published: 2016
Place of publication: Brooklyn, NY
Language: eng; rus
Number of pages: 159
ISBN-13: 9781937027575
Copyright date: 2016
Subjects: Translations into English; Russian poetry; Poetry; History
Other titles: Written in the dark.; Written in the dark. English.
Description: "This anthology presents a group of writers and a literary phenomenon that has been unknown even to Russian readers for 70 years, obfuscated by historical amnesia. Gennady Gor, Pavel Zaltsman, Dmitry Maksimov, Sergey Rudakov, and Vladimir Sterligov, wrote these works in 1942, during the most severe winter of the Nazi Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944). In striking contrast to state-sanctioned, heroic "Blockade" poetry in which the stoic body of the exemplary citizen triumphs over death, the poems gathered here show the Siege individual (blokadnik) as a weak and desperate incarnation of Job. These poets wrote in situ about the famine disease, madness, cannibalism, and prostitution around them—subjects so tabooed in those most-Soviet times that they would never think of publishing. Moreover, the formal ambition and macabre avant-gardism of this uncanny body of work match its horrific content, giving birth to a "poor" language which alone could reflect the depth of suffering and psychological destruction experienced by victims of that historical disaster. Polina Barskova, a Russian-language poet and scholar of the Siege, edited this volume from archival materials. The book includes an introduction by Barskova and an afterword by renowned literary critic Ilya Kukulin. The poems and supplementary materials were translated by Anand Dibble, Ben Felker-Quinn, Ainsley Morse, Eugene Ostashevsky, Rebekah Smith, Charles Swank, Jason Wagner, and Matvei Yankelevich."--Publisher's website (viewed 09/08/2016).
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.

Poems in Russian with English translation on facing pages. Introduction and afterword in English.
Table of contents: title: Written in the dark : an introduction / by Polina Barskova; title: Gennady Gor; title: Dmitry Maksimov; title: Sergey Rudakov; title: Vladimir Sterligov; title: Pavel Zaltsman; title: Afterword / by Ilya Kukulin; title: Notes to the poems; title: Appendix : Zaltsman's diaries.