After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin (2011)

After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin was named Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation (Winter 2011)

Edinburgh University Press reviewed After Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin here.

Semyon Izrailevich Lipkin (1911-2003) is now recognised as a leading literary figure in Russia, though he is still relatively unknown in the west. In his own country, he was for many years known primarily as a translator, with only close friends able to read his poems. These friends included the great poet Anna Akhmatova, who acknowledged and supported his genius. It was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that the general reading public was allowed to become fully aware of the scope and depth of Semyon Lipkin’s own poetry.

Semyon Lipkin’s poetry is defiantly clever and reserved. There is no artificiality of an anguish – only constant restraint of a wound. – Joseph Brodsky