Life as gift
A strong statement by a man whose life was taken from him in the harshest circumstances, and who lived at...
A dancing class for trees
Something utterly comforting about orchards, especially old and haphazard ones. But I never thought of them as a dancing class...
Expressing allegiance
Mandelstam seems to have seen something timeless in the curve of a horse’s neck in Armenia, and discerned a proud...
Poetry as plough
Elsewhere Mandelstam connects poetry to recall. Here it is a time-turning plough, bringing the deepest layers of time to the...
Gift-bearing ambassadorial winds
Having a love of Persian poetry, known only through translation, and of Chinese poetry, engaged with tentatively and carefully in...
Librarian as satrap
Having known nothing but kindness among librarians, this striking description of a martinet guarding his books almost at the point...
Where every word starts with ‘a’
I love Mandelstam's poetic summary of place, here the city of Sukhum, where he says every word starts with...
An invitation in your pocket
A sense of feeling like a grand guest, as if Tamerlane himself has invited you and the world is at...
Jangling the keys of your language
A lovely way to signal a pride and enjoyment of one’s language, a linguistic version of jangling your Ferrari keys...
A butterfly in a cactus library
Such an imaginative construct to describe a jagged script! I had fun looking for an image of a cabbage-looking butterfly...
White-toothed commissars
Perhaps alluding to a world in which commissars, having some status in the pecking order, probably had a better chance...
Swift as a telegram
This simile for swiftness drawing on an age in which telegram were one of the fastest forms of communication. Also...
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