Stephen Berg – författare

There are few precedents for what Stephen Berg has attempted and accomplished in these poems. Not really translations, nor even versions or imitations, Berg's poems are meditations on and through the person and poetry of Anna Akhmatova (1899–1966), one of Russia's greatest poets. Akhmatova, whose life began in the Victorian twilight and spanned the days of Revolution and the era of Stalinist persecution, interwove pagan fervor with Christian austerity in poems of passionate longing for the past and lost love. Irresistibly drawn into Akhmatova's orbit, Berg "believed that I was being released from myself by writing these poems when, in fact, I was merely discovering, hearing from a part of myself I did not remember, or know."

A breathtaking, incomparable overview of American poetry at the turn of the millennium, from experimental language poetry to traditional formal verse, with all the vital, monumental stops between, The Body Electric captures the spirit of contemporary American poetry. Among the 180 poets included in this collection are Ai, John Ashbery, John Berryman, Charles Bukowski, Lucille Clifton, Carolyn Forche, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Hass, Seamus Heaney, Kenneth Koch, Yusef Komunyakaa, and Derek Walcott, plus a generous array of exciting new poets from recent years. The breadth and innovation of American poetry as well as the shifting styles and tastes of over a quarter of a century are represented in this volume. No other anthology gives such a complete and wide-ranging representation of American poetry today.