Osip Emilevich Mandelstam, the great twentieth-century Russian poet, was once thought to be buried forever in secret files and condemned to oblivion by official silence. Thanks to his widow, dedicated scholars, and the talented efforts of Burton Raffel and Alla Burago in this volume he takes his rightful and long-overdue place as the twentieth-century poet. Raffel and Burago provide the complete body of Mandelstam's poetry in English for the first time, and Sidney Monas offers notes to the poems that are designed to give readers access to their connection with the poet's life, thus providing a greater appreciation of his work. Monas has also written an introduction to the collection, which is a highly interesting and informative view of Mandelstam's personality as well as an examination of his poetic method. The book also features an appendix containing Monas's translations of two chapters from the Russian edition of Nadezhda Mandelstam's memoir of her life with her husband.

Introduction by: Sidney Monas