Tsvetaeva is fascinating, the translation if readable and has a wonderful rhythm, but I have very low tolerance for, as the blub itself puts it, a lyrical diary that pays hommage to other poets. There's just too many poems in which Tsvetaeva talks about whom she wants to sleep with, or whom she's sleeping with, or subtle variations on that wanting to sleep with stuff. And for whatever reason, I have a very hard time reading 'tribute to...' poems.

Given these facts--which are about me, not the book--this is a pretty solid volume. When Marina's imagining herself as an aged grandmother hitting on the young men, it's fun. The poems to Alya are very moving. Some of the narratives are masterpieces of compression. She's funny, she's smart, and the context for the volume makes it worth a look: Tsetaeva wrote these poems during the chaotic years after the revolution, while her husband was away fighting the Bolsheviks. ( )