Head On A Gleaming Plate by Marina Tsvetaeva, trans. Christopher Whyte Judith Willson and described by John Kinsella

and described by John Kinsella as a ‘masterpiece’

The poems range across scales of distance

A poet whose work is infused with a kind of religious ecstasy

and sonnets

Contemporary readers are less likely to condemn a poet for hinting at or even outrightly depicting sex

Head On A Gleaming Plate by Marina Tsvetaeva, trans. Christopher Whyte Judith Willson and described by John KinsellaThe poems in this volume were composed between August 1917 and November 1918, and thus they span the most turbulent period of the 20th century in Russia, as the nascent republic was overthrown by the Bolsheviks, and the country descended into civil war. This collection concentrates only on the lyric poems that Tsvetaeva wrote at this time, and their importance should not be underestimated. Each offers a modest, unassuming gateway to the immense world