Marina Tsvetaeva: The Essential Poetry includes translations by Michael M. Naydan and Slava I. Yastremski of lyric poetry from all of great Modernist Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva's published collections and from all periods of her life. It also includes a translation of two of Tsvetaeva's masterpieces in the genre of the long poem, "Poem of the End" and "Poem of the Mountain." The collection strives to present the best of Tsvetaeva's poetry in a small single volume and to give a representati...

'Why do you whimper and wail, O Tatra streams and rivers, who carry your plaintive lament resounding to the sea?' asks the narrator toward the end of The Slovaks, in Ancient Days, and Now. They respond: 'Because our human compatriots do not join together in memory, as we our waters mix with our origin, and because their lives do not resound booming, but roll on unconsciously, like hidden streams, silently to the sea of the life of the nations, young man!' This quotation from the most famous p...