Milestones

Jacket Description/Back: Milestones is an apt title for this collection, for the eighty-four poems within show a poet passing from mere talent into mastery of her craft. Composed between January and December of 1916, these poems find the twenty-four year-old Tsvetaeva thirsting for the fullness of life while at the same time contemplating the inevitability of death-a theme she was to revisit many times in her career. Tsvetaeva's work of the time also reflects her knowledge of (and pride in) her native culture, especially the centrality of Moscow as the ultimate destination of all Russians. Throughout the verse she opens up to the sensual wonders of nature-sky, forest, wind, and not least her beloved daughter Alya, who would come to figure greatly in the work and legacy of her mother. Milestones lays out a sensual feast of moods, themes, styles, and rhythms-all the ingredients that would in time reveal Tsvetaeva as one of the most daring and original poets of her time. Table of Contents: Translator's AcknowledgmentsTranslator's IntroductionMarina Tsvetaeva: A Biographical Sketch"Milestones" Poems of Moscow Poems to Blok Poems to Akhmatova DanielTranslator's NotesIndex of First LinesBiographical Note: Marina Tsvetaeva was born in 1892 in Moscow and died in 1941. Her other works include "The Ratcatcher," published in 2000 by Northwestern University Press. Robin Kemball is the translator of Tsvetaeva's "The Demesne of the Swans." He lives in Switzerland. Marc Notes: Bibl. ref. & index; Poems; Parallel text in Russian & English. Publisher Marketing: Milestones (1922) is regarded as Marina Tsvetaeva's first mature collection and remains one of the highlights of her entire career as a poet. It is a lyrical diary for 1916, the final year of Tsarist Russia, before the twin revolutions of February and October 1917. A young woman aged 23 is seen grappling with motherhood and marriage, with love, sex and friendship, with the traditions of the Orthodox church and her own instinctive polytheism, with the literary environment where she is reaching maturity and, last but not least, with the staggering dimensions of her own talent. Review Citations:

New York Review of Books 02/13/2003 pg. 35 (EAN 9780810119413, Paperback)

Contributor Bio:  Tsvetaeva, Marina Marina Ivanovna Tsvetaeva (8 October 1892 - 31 August 1941) was a Russian and Soviet poet and writer born in Moscow. Her work was not looked kindly upon by Stalin and the Bolshevik r gime; her literary rehabilitation only began in the 1960s. Tsvetaeva's poetry arose from her own deeply convoluted personality, her eccentricity and tightly disciplined use of language. Among her themes were female sexuality, and the tension in women's private emotions; she bridges the mutually contradictory schools of Acmeism and symbolism. Contributor Bio:  Whyte, Christopher Christopher Whyte, a prize-winning Gaelic poet and the author of four novels in English, two of which gained Scottish Arts Council awards, is Reader in Scottish Literature at Glasgow University.