Solar Eclipse 1914

Arseny Tarkovsky (1907-1989) is considered to be one of the most important Russian poets of the twentieth-century, yet his work is rarely encountered outside Russia. This selection of his verse, brilliantly translated in metre and rhyme by the late Peter Oram, aims to make his poetry more widely available to an English-language readership while the introduction by two eminent scholars of Russian literature sets it in its wider context.

"Readers will be deeply grateful to the late Peter Oram for giving new life to the work of a major Russian poet who has never been fully recognized in the English-speaking world - even if his haunting words have been heard in Russian by the millions who have sen his son's film Mirror. Arseny Tarkovsky lived through the Soviet period from beginning to end, preserving his inner independence and leaving a precious legacy of memorable lyrics that achieve a dream-like potency of suggestion. Oram's inventive and beautifully shaped translations combine in an exemplary way poetic freedom and a careful attention to the form and the sentiment of the originals."
- Peter France, Professor Emeritus, University of Edinburgh