Randi 
Since it’s still spooky season (happy Halloween!), here’s another of the creepier prose poems in Turgenev’s Senilia collection! Meet “The End of the World,” which is as dark as it sounds — or rather darker, since “the end of the world” is a phrase that has come to be used with comic melodrama. I read … Read more
I’ll tell you what, folks. My poetic muse is on strike and has been for some time. I’ve been trying to tempt her back with treats and attention, but she’s kind of tired and mopey and depressed. I think she misses Russia. Maybe a few playful verses would cheer her up? This is a goofy … Read more
What can I say about this one? It’s a shorter prose poem, one published toward the end of this book and written later than most of the others, in November 1879. I chose this one to translate next because it was quick, and the language was fairly accessible…but the content was rather deep and complex, … Read more
Y’all, I know it’s been a while since my last translation. But I’m easing back into it (and back into writing in general, I suppose) after a busyness- and pandemic-induced hiatus by beginning with some prose poems! For years I’ve had a dual-language copy of Ivan Turgenev’s prose poems — in the original Russian with … Read more
This is actually a very old piece, originally written a decade ago and then revamped about five years later. Something about it keeps drawing me back. Perhaps I ought to call it a prose poem rather than a story, though… Cover by Aero Gallerie. The patient Talla wakes in the hospital of the all-but-dead, and the … Read more