As I Said: Selected Poems

Lev Loseff is regarded as one of the leading Russian poets of his era. Born in 1937, he grew up in Leningrad and worked as a journalist in northern Sakhalin, and as an editor on a magazine for children, writing plays for a puppet theatre and poetry for children. He emigrated to America in 1976 where he worked as a compositor and proofreader, took a Ph.D. and taught Russian literature at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire.He died in the USA in 2009.

• Series Editor's note / 9 Translator's preface / 10 Introduction / 16 At the clinic / 25 The Talking Parrot The Flat / 27 An Excursion / 27 Kazan, July 1957 / 29 School No. 1 / 31 'Who Says Sheep are Different from Goats?' / 31 Joseph in 1965 / 33 Russian Depression / 35 In the Empty Room / 37 As I Said The Blood washed off - ' / 39 The New Abode / 39 Grounded Again / 43 In Memory of a Polar Explorer / 43 The See-through House / 45 The Funeral Parlour's abuzz / 45 S. D. / 47 Out of Bunin / 49 Fragment / 49 The Pier that disappeared / 51 'As you get on - ' / 53 'This city's alive, - ' / 55 Right Now / 55 June 1972 / 59 Dostoevsky's Handwriting / 61 The Reformer / 61 Afterword Afterword / 65 In Memory of Mikhail Krasilnikov / 79 'Me and the Old Lady' / 81 Heartbeat / 83 New Information concerning Carl and Clara Not / 83 Untitled / 85 Old Testament Autumn / 87 For O's Scrapbook / 87 Forgotten Villages / 89 Gentrification / 91 The Parisian Note / 93 Imitation / 95 Only Just / 95 Privy Councillor April 1950 / 101 Toilette / 101 Ledger Entry / 103 'December Dreams come 'in a Crazy Rush' / 105 Awakened by an Unexpected Silence' / 107 The Miraculous Raid Pronouns / 109 The Tram / 111 'I'm living in the States from boredom' / 113 'The splendid thing about these dreams' / 115 'Having traversed half my three score and ten' / 117 Sonnet / 121 The Extended Day - / 123 Grounded / 137 The Last Romance / 141 ' "And this one here is basil", he declared' / 143 Author's & Translator's Notes / 144 Biographical Notes / 151

"Smith's translations are a labour of love and skill, nowhere better seen than in the palindromic "Toilette" or the many instances of terza rima. Tonally and emotionally, they are perfectly pitched. Such formal and verbal precision reminds us, as does Smith himself in a smartly concise preface, that translation estranges us from the original. Linguistic and prosodic fidelity of the most scrupulous kind are estimable virtues, but the forms of poetry are also the forms of thought and emotion. Poets in the English and American traditions would hear their own thoughts and emotions according to a different music and different traditions. To read Lev Loseff in these brilliant translations is to come as close as possible to hearing Russian poetry in the English language, and that is no mean feat." Andrew Kahn, TLS May 2013