Poems 2020

THE YEAR 2020 was the year the world turned inward. We may have stayed at home, but this was a time to look deeply inside ourselves to find connections that we carry in us with all people 

all around the world.

ACCLAIMED AUTHOR and translator Roger Pulvers recorded a hundred readings for his YouTube channel "Roger Pulvers Reads." This became a popular site for people from many countries to connect with each other through the profound beauty and consummate wisdom of poetry.

THESE ARE ICONIC poems in their home countries-Russia, Poland, Japan-each appearing here in a brilliantly unique voice. Most of these poems were read on the YouTube channel, but there are newly translated ones as well, from the prophetic warning of revolution by the Russian poet Nikolai Gumilev, to the droll and sagacious haiku of Kobayashi Issa; from the satirical black humor of the Polish poet Julian Tuwim to the erotic tanka of the feminist poet Yosano Akiko.

ALL POETS are given insightful biographical background commentary on their art, life and times; and many of the poems come with clear explanatory notes.

The poets appearing here describe not only affairs of the heart but also upheaval and revolution, exile and betrayal, and encounters and events that are often brimming with hilarity and wit, proving without a doubt that poetry is the lifeblood of a nation.

"May these poems bring you a bit of inspiration," writes Roger Pulvers in his Introduction, "a good deal of consolation and much much joy." 

CONTENTS: Introductions, POEMS FROM RUSSIAN: Nikolai Gumilev, Boris Pasternak, Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Alexander Blok, Sergei Esenin, Marina Tsvetaeva, Valery Bryusov, Konstantin Balmont, Andrei Bely, Vladislav Khodasevich, Alexander Pushkin, Fyodor Tyutchev, Ivan Turgenev, Nikolai Nekrasov, Ivan Krylov, POEMS FROM POLISH: Bolesaw Lemian, Konstanty Ildefons Gaczyski, Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska, Julian Tuwim, Adam Mickiewicz, Maria Konopnicka, Tadeusz Borowski, POEMS FROM JAPANESE: Yosano Akiko, Terayama Shuji, Nakahara Chuya, Miki Rofu, Hayashi Fumiko, Okamoto Kanoko, Sagawa Chika, Masaoka Shiki, Kobayashi Issa, Baisao, Takamura Kotaro, Miyazawa Kenji, A POEM OF MY OWN, INDEX OF POEMS