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  • The Jolt
  • Anna Semyonovna Prismanova (bio)
    —translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk

The jolt must come from far away:the start of bread is in the grain.A stream, although still underground,aspires to reflect the sky.

A future Sunday’s distant lightreaches us early in the week.The jolt must come from far awayto trigger earthquakes in the heart.

A shoulder alien to mecontrols the movement of my hand.In order to acquire such strength,the jolt must come from far away.

late 1930s to early 1940s [End Page 147]

Anna Semyonovna Prismanova

Anna Semyonovna Prismanova (1892–1960), one of the most original Russian poets of her generation, was born in Latvia into the family of a Jewish doctor. The family moved to Moscow in 1918. By 1924 she had moved to Paris, where she married the poet Aleksandr Ginger, with whom she had two sons. Writing for her was a full-time but private activity; she played little part in the cultural life of the Russian émigré world. The first of her four collections appeared in 1937.

Boris Dralyuk

Boris Dralyuk teaches Russian literature at UCLA and has translated several collections of poetry and prose from Russian and Polish. He received first prize in the 2011 Compass Translation Award competition and, with Irina Mashinski, first prize in the 2012 Joseph Brodsky/Stephen Spender Translation Prize competition. Along with with Robert Chandler and Irina Mashinski, he is a co-editor of the forthcoming Anthology of Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky (Penguin Classics, 2014).

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