Though we know Vladimir Nabokov as a brilliant novelist, his first love was poetry. This landmark collection brings together the best of his verse, including many pieces that have never before
appeared in English.
���These poems span the whole of Nabokov's career, from the newly discovered ��usic,��written in 1914, to the short, playful ��o V矇ra,��composed in 1974. Many are newly translated by Dmitri
Nabokov, including The University Poem, a sparkling novel in verse modeled on Pushkin's Eugene Onegin that constitutes a significant new addition to Nabokov's oeuvre. Included too
are such poems as ��ilith�� an early work which broaches the taboo theme revisited nearly forty years later in Lolita, and ��n Evening of Russian Poetry�� a masterpiece in which Nabokov
movingly mourns his lost language in the guise of a versified lecture on Russian delivered to college girls. The subjects range from the Russian Revolution to the American refrigerator, taking
in on the way motel rooms, butterflies, ice-skating, love, desire, exile, loneliness, language, and poetry itself; and the poet whirls swiftly between the brilliantly painted facets of
his genius, wearing masks that are, by turns, tender, demonic, sincere, self-parodying, shamanic, visionary, and ingeniously domestic.
