"In five superbly researched chapters, and an introduction and afterword that are chapter equivalents, Michael Wachtel has produced a remarkable study that fleshes out and even attaches a memorable face to several salient meters and forms....Wachtel masterfully and insightfully unravels the complicated material and renders it invitingly accessible." The Russian Review

• Acknowledgments; Note on translations and transliterations; Introduction; 1. The Russian ballad: passion, betrayal, revenge, and the amphibrachic tetrameter line; 2. The blank verse lyric: '… Again I visited' revisited; 3. The Onegin stanza: from poetic digression to poetic nostalgia; 4. Russian Arcadia: the elegiac distich and classical stylization; 5. Heirs of Mayakovsky: the poet and the citizen; Afterword: the meaning of form; Notes; Bibliography; Index.

"In five superbly researched chapters, and an introduction and afterword that are chapter equivalents, Michael Wachtel has produced a remarkable study that fleshes out and even attaches a memorable face to several salient meters and forms....Wachtel masterfully and insightfully unravels the complicated material and renders it invitingly accessible." The Russian Review

• Acknowledgments; Note on translations and transliterations; Introduction; 1. The Russian ballad: passion, betrayal, revenge, and the amphibrachic tetrameter line; 2. The blank verse lyric: '… Again I visited' revisited; 3. The Onegin stanza: from poetic digression to poetic nostalgia; 4. Russian Arcadia: the elegiac distich and classical stylization; 5. Heirs of Mayakovsky: the poet and the citizen; Afterword: the meaning of form; Notes; Bibliography; Index.