Providing a rare and creative sense of authority s various faces, this collection of poems travels from intellectual and artistic power to philosophical, military, and imperial power; and above all, personal influence. The verse introduces the persuasiveness, complexities, and intrigues of table talk a European tradition of informed and enlightened conversation that has virtually disappeared from the experience of North American culture. Commanding and informed in their own sense of purpose, these pieces evince a gentle curiosity for greatness, creating an engaging portrait of simple...
Providing a rare and creative sense of authority s various faces, this collection of poems travels from intellectual and artistic power to philosophic...
A wonderful look at Soviet-era life as witnessed from the edge of the empire, this book is comprised of letters, poems, and prose pieces that together create a narrative. Through an entirely original form, Vladimir Azarov, who trained to be an architect in Moscow during Stalin's Iron Curtain years, begins with a simple exploratory exchange of letters between him and a faceless bureaucrat during his days overseeing the design and construction of the Soviet Embassy in the isolated republic of Mongolia. What follows is an unfolding sequence that finds Azarov meeting a remarkable Mongolian woman...
A wonderful look at Soviet-era life as witnessed from the edge of the empire, this book is comprised of letters, poems, and prose pieces that together...
Vladimir Azarov grew up and came to maturity during a time in the Soviet Union when penal camps and the secret police were ubiquitous, but the one great truth that he and the world learned from all the great Russian writers, and that he learned in his own life in political exile, is that almost everything can be taken from an individual but his or her story, his or her undying and unyielding sense of self. No matter what, the self perseveres, even in the most perverse and punishing circumstances. Azarov, in his own plainspoken voice, has composed seven stories about seven lives that are...
Vladimir Azarov grew up and came to maturity during a time in the Soviet Union when penal camps and the secret police were ubiquitous, but the one gre...
Few moments, certainly few speeches, in the 20th century so radically altered the flow of international events and specifically the direction of Russian history as Nikita Khrushchev s 1956 attack on the cult of Joseph Stalin. Overnight, a society under the lock and key of ideology and the eye of a secret police was sprung loose, entering into a period that has since come to be known as the Thaw. Suddenly, citizens like the young Moscow architect, Vladimir Azarov, were free to read banned Russian writers like Solzhenitsyn, to attend concerts by stars like Marlene Dietrich, and free to go...
Few moments, certainly few speeches, in the 20th century so radically altered the flow of international events and specifically the direction of Ru...
An unyielding fever of 103, the Sochi Olympics, and a state of inspirational semidelirium came together as Vladimir Azarov sat in front of his television, images swirled in his mind like a waltzing kaleidoscope. Memories from decades past were triggered as the Pussy Riot girls were being whipped by Cossacks. Marilyn Monroe of "Some Like It Hot "became his muse while he composed recollections: his first trip to Sochi in 1962; sitting with Henry Moore at his home in Much Haddam; discussing verisimilitudes with Pasolini, art with Frank O Hara, film and acting with Leni Riefenstahl; shock at...
An unyielding fever of 103, the Sochi Olympics, and a state of inspirational semidelirium came together as Vladimir Azarov sat in front of his televis...