“Poems by
ESENIN”
translated by
charles brasch and peter soskice
with illustrations from woodcuts by Wayne Seyb
New Zealand poet
Charles Brasch (1909–1973) travelled to Russia as a young man in 1934. After
retiring from the editorship of the literary journal Landfall in 1966, he
studied informally in the Russian department of the University of Otago. Peter
Soskice (1919–1972), a lecturer there at the time, assisted Brasch to produce
these beautiful, vivid translations of
the early
twentieth century Russian poet Sergei Aleksandrovich Esenin, which were first
published under the present title in 1970, in a chapbook described as “printed
by several student hands at the Wai-te-ata Press, Department of English,
Victoria University of Wellington”, with a cover by Robin White.
Esenin, one of
the most widely read and loved of all Russian poets, was born in 1895 of a
peasant family in the village of Konstantinovo, Ryazan Province, Central
Russia, and died by his own hand in Leningrad on 28 December 1925.
“Esenin lived
life as a folk tale. He was Prince Ivan who flew over the ocean on a gray wolf
and caught the Firebird Isadora Duncan by the tail. He wrote his poems by fairy-tale
means, sometimes as if from cards dealt out for a game of solitaire of words,
sometimes in his heart's blood. What was most precious about him – the
depiction of the nature of his homeland, its woodlands, Central Russia, Ryazan
– he passed along with a stunning freshness the way it had been given to him in
childhood.”
– Boris
Pasternak, “An autobiographical sketch” (translation J. Kates).
For this new
edition of “Poems by Esenin” Cold Hub Press commissioned artist Wayne Seyb to
create not just a new cover image, but a set of nine woodcuts to accompany the
poems. “Broken Shadows”, a chapbook of Seyb’s poems and woodcuts, was published
by Cold Hub Press in 2011.
LOOK, EVENING NOW
Look, evening now. The dew
Is glistening on a nettle.
I stand beside the road
My back against a willow.
Broad moonlight falls
Straight on our cottage roof.
Somewhere far off I hear
The song of a nightingale.
It’s pleasant here and warm
As in winter by the stove.
And the birches, silver,
Stand like great candles.
And far beyond the river,
Beyond the forest border,
Goes the drowsy watchman
Beating his wooden clapper.
© Charles Brasch and Peter Soskice 1970
© The Estate of Charles Brasch 2015
POEMS BY ESENIN
ISBN: 978-0-473-31391-3
Softcover
chapbook with flaps, 48 pp, 210 x 145mm
RRP NZ$19.50
Cold Hub Press PO Box 156 Lyttelton 8841
New Zealand +64 3 3299389
http://www.coldhubpress.co.nz
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