Osip Mandelstam was perhaps the most important Russian poet of the nineteen-hundreds--a crucial instigator of the "revolution of the word" that took place in early twentieth-century St. Petersburg and a political non-conformist who earned the enmity of Stalin and his totalitarian regime. W...

Osip Mandelstam was perhaps the most important Russian poet of the nineteen-hundreds--a crucial instigator of the "revolution of the word" that took place in early twentieth-century St. Petersburg and a political non-conformist who earned the enmity of Stalin and his totalitarian regime. With Stolen Air, Christian Wiman, editor of POETRY, America's oldest and most prestigious magazine of verse, offers a new selection and translation of Mandelstam's poetry--from his hard-edged and highly formal early poems to his almost savagely musical later works--for a new generation to be moved by, marvel at, and appreciate.