One of the great books of twentieth-century poetry.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 5.0 / 5.0
Powerful poetry of material things:
Some of our strongest poets are those who energize the material things and concrete sensations of daily life in special ways. Objects set apart by poetic imagination and power become sacred and establish a bond between the reader as perceiver and the thing perceived. By extension the bond opens the reader to an entire universe of ensouled matter--a new way of looking at the world. Such is the poetry of Boris Pasternak in this 1917 book written at the height of The Great War and on the eve of the... more info
Right up there with Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, and Pushkin:
Pasternak's poetry is better than his prose. Why he is still often better known for the latter baffles me. I suggest this or any of his collected poems to the reader looking for creative, quality poetry. Pasternak certainly ranks as one of the greatest amongst the group of very talented Russian poets that emerged during the first quarter of the 20th centuary. His poems deserve just as much (if not more) recognition as his novels.
Sister of Mine: Poetry of Detail
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While Pasternak is known in the United States mainly for his novel "Dr. Zhivago" - or, more to the point, the film based on "Dr. Zhivago" - he was quite an accomplished poet. A better poet, I think, than he was a novelist. Although I've never read Mr. Rudman's translation - or, for that matter, any translation at all - "Sister of Mine-Life" keeps to its bosom a host of beautiful poems.
Rather than try to explain Pasternak's incredible gift for metaphor and detail, his absolute love of words - he was a... more info
