Into the Snow

Gennady Aygi (1934-2006) is widely considered to be one of the great avant-garde poets from the former Soviet Union. He wrote and lived during times of extreme terror and suffering for the people of the Soviet Union and because of the repressive censorship, like many writers of his generation Aygi could only publish his work abroad, and even then at great peril to himself and the people who helped him smuggle his work out of the country. Sarah Valentine's first book of translations, Into the Snow: Poems by Gennady Aygi (forthcoming from Wave Books, fall 2011), is a collection of poems translated from the Russian-language poetry of Chuvash poet Gennady Aygi (1934-2006). Individual translations have been featured in the Two Lines anthology Some Kind of Beautiful Signal, as well as in journals such as diode, Circumference, and Redaction: Poetry and Poetics. Sarah has a BA in Russian Studies and Creative Writing from Carnegie Mellon University and a PhD in Russian Literature from Princeton University. She has received a Templeton Foundation grant for her research at Princeton University's Center for the Study of Religion and a prestigious Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities at UCLA. Sarah lives in Los Angeles and is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of California, Riverside, in the Department of Comparative Literature and Foreign Languages where she teaches Russian literature, comparative literature, film, and critical theory.

Introduction Once Again: Into the Snow A Few Notes on Poetry People Girl in Childhood Dream: Flight of the Dragonfly Now Always Snow The Last Ravine Silence Farewell Silence Untitled On Reading the Poem Untitled Aloud Again: In Breaks Between Sleep Field near Ferapontovo Swallow: A Way of Connecting Mother Silence Pines-with-Birch Pine on Rock Rose of Silence Bidding Shalamov Farewell And: One Year Later The Shaman and the Potato Five Matryoshkas Hunger 1947 Kazimir Malevich Summer with Angels The Tale of the Aging Harlequin Winter Bender N. Kh. Among the Paintings Degree: Of Stability Field: At the Height of Winter This Years Roses Outskirts: Winter Without People Reading Norwid Past and Utopian Regarding a Long-Distance Conversation Song from the Time of Your Forefathers Little Tatar Song Excerpts from Thirty-six Variations on Chuvash and Tatar Folk Songs Two Epilogues Garden Grief Response to a Friends Book Excerpts from Thirty-six Variations on Chuvash and Mari Folk Songs Excerpts from Twenty-eight Variations on Chuvash and Udmurt Folk Songs Starting from the Field Long Ago Summer with Prantel In the Middle of the Field Untitled Field Without Us