Thursday, May 17, 2007

Tambourine

Here's a poem of mine, just published in Literary Imagination: "Tambourine."

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

After reading your new poem, Tambourine,
I read up on Osip Mandelstam (on Wikipedia,
of course!) finding resonances there for
some tidbits from your poem:
goldfinch was one such;
death by unspecified illness
(lice? typhus?) was another.
Another resonance was much more general ...
the Wikipedia write-up quoted O.M. saying
something like "Where else but in the USSR
is poetry SO respected that poets can get
KILLED for what they write?"

I'd like to read more about/by Mandelstam,
and -- thanks to Wikipedia -- I know to look
for the two memoir(?) volumes written by his
wife/widow. Probably a good starting place!
And -- thanks to "Tambourine" -- I know
to ask YOU to recommend a "first" volume
of his poetry (in English translation, please!)
as my "next step" in THAT direction ...
please-and-thank-you!

-- dhsh

PS: Using a link provided on the Literary
Imagination page, I found "other articles
by AShields" including this one ...
sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/295/5552/102
... which even has your middle initial "right"!

Andrew Shields said...

My poem was inspired by Ralph Dutli's German biography of Mandelstam, which is unfortunately not available in English.

In fact, most of the Mandelstam I have read is in German, so I am at a loss to recommend English versions. I'll post a call for suggestions.

Unknown said...

A powerful poem--thanks for posting the link (and for writing it!).

It's a cool magazine, too--I think I'll ask my library to subscribe.

Best,
K