The Garnett Book of Russian Verse: A Treasury of Russian Poets from 1730 to 1996

"Bitter is the fate of poets of all races: fate punishes Russia worst of all..." wrote the nineteenth-century poet Kiukhelbeker from Siberia.

"God gave their hearts fire, their minds – light. Yes, their feelings were inspired and ardent. What then? They are hurled into dark prisons, killed by the freezing cold of hopeless exile..." 

A century later, in a Crimea devastated by civil war, Max Voloshin brooded: "Dark is the lot of the Russian poet: an inscrutable fate leads Pushkin to the pistol's barrel, Dostoevsky to the scaffold."

Poetry has been because of (or despite) its tribulations the life force of Russian culture, its spiritual sustenance. This anthology is not just an introduction: it is a treasury which aims to make accessible to the interested reader a body of poetry as significant as anything the human spirit has produced. 

This is the most extensive collection of Russian verse from the 1750s to the 1990s to be gathered into one volume, together with literal, but readable English translations at the bottom of each page. It is designed to be of interest to a wide range of readers, from lovers of poetry in general, to specialists in Russian literature. As well as the best-known poems, this anthology has retrieved much that has been unjustly neglected.

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