Paul Celan

Heather McHugh

Nikolai Popov

Rich new translations of one of the most important poets of our time.

101 Poems

Glottal Stop

A frog, peacefully sitting in a meadow, is suddenly attacked by an umbrella-wielding mouse in a confrontation that quickly turns into full-scale war, in a wordless picture book with a strong anti-war message. Reprint.

Why?

In vivid illustrations by Nikolai Popov, shoes are transformed into transportation for every creature, be it giraffe, alligator, mouse or elephant. An ingenious imagination enlivens these flights of fancy where shoes and other familiar objects become boats, motorcycles, houses, and many other unlikely vehicles. Come join this amusing shoe parade!

The Great Shoe Parade

A frog finds a beautiful flower and picks it for himself. When a mouse sees him with it, his jealousy overcomes him, and he swipes it. Frog’s friends come to his aid and chase the mouse away. But before the frogs can celebrate, Mouse’s friends return for a counter-attack. Before long the conflict has devolved into a full-scale frog-mouse war. By the end of it, all either side can ask is: why? This seemingly simple book tackles an important subject and will be an invaluable way to talk to young children about conflict and warfare.

WHY?

This is one of the first books to offer the Russian public's view on the most significant political and social transformations the country has witnessed since the Bolshevik revolution. As the current government wields less power in censoring the mass media, images of popular Russian culture become a symbol of their growing democratic voice. The author has given us a rare glimpse into the Russian political psyche by bringing the reader through recent changes in public moods, attitudes, opinions, and behavior. Drawing on the country's rich history - the Bolshevik revolution, the Communist period, the Cold War, Gorbachev's regime, and now perestroika - Popov reveals the new social and political organization that is slowly shaping the country's future. Popov, director of political polling at the Russian Center for Public Opinion Research in Moscow, bases his results on fullscale surveys conducted by one of the few institutions in the former Soviet Union capable of such research. The undeveloped and superficial nature of mass views has resulted in an extremely volatile mass consciousness. Popov found that public opinion can swing from complete support of a policy one day to rejection of the same policy the next. The most important component measured throughout this work is a painful, erratic process of the birth of individual opinion, reckoning, and personal judgment. In his long-range forecasts, Popov speculates that the next five years will be dominated by increasing individualism and entrepreneurship. Totalitarian power destroyed Russian society. Now, in the midst of a painful ascent to capitalist economy and political pluralism, the Russian people are slowly reclaiming their culture. Atthe heart of The Russian People Speak are the underlying dynamics of the roles of old doctrines clashing with the new nonofficial populist movement.

Nikolai Popov

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