Research Catalog

Title

Letter to the Amazon / Marina Tsvetaevna ; translated from the French by A'Dora Phillips & Gaëlle Cogan ; introduction by Catherine Ciepiela.

Author

T︠S︡vetaeva, Marina, 1892-1941

Publication

• Brooklyn, New York : Ugly Duckling Presse, 2016.
• Berkeley, California : Small Press Distribution.
• Saline, Michigan : McNaughton & Gunn.
• ©2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Phillips, A'Dora
• Cogan, Gaëlle
• Ciepiela, Catherine
• Bogden, Katherine
• Ugly Duckling Presse, publisher.
• McNaughton & Gunn, printer.
• Woodberry Poetry Room (Harvard College Library). Collections, repository. poe

Description

ix, 31 pages; 21 cm

Summary

"Like many of Marina Tsvetaeva’s essays and poems, Letter to the Amazon is addressed to another writer, in this case Natalie Clifford Barney, a wealthy American expatriate in Paris. Though written in 1932, Tsvetaeva’s letter was in response to what Barney said about lesbian relationships and motherhood in her 1920 Pensées dune Amazone (Thoughts of an Amazon). Tsvetaeva uses her essay to emphasize what is to her mind a general truth of lesbian relationships (i.e. they cannot endure because of a woman’s innate desire for a child) and to explore her seemingly agonized feelings about Sophia Parnok, the Russian poet with whom she fell in love in 1914, when Tsvetaeva was twenty-two and Parnok twenty-nine."--Publisher's website (viewed 05/16/2016).

Series Statement

Eastern European poets series ; #41

Uniform Title

• Mon frère féminin. English
• Eastern European poets series ; #41.
• Woodberry Poetry Room Blue Star collection of books and manuscripts.

Alternative Title

Mon frère féminin.

Subject

• T︠S︡vetaeva, Marina, 1892-1941 > Translations into English
• Russian poetry > 20th century > Translations into English
• Lesbianism
• Motherhood
• Homosexuality, Female

Genre/Form

• Russian poetry – 20th century.
• Translations

Note

• Poems.
• Translation of Mon frère féminin: lettre à l'Amazone (Paris : Mercure de France, 1979).

Biography (note)

• "Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) was one of the most renowned poets of 20th-century Russia. Her life coincided with years of extreme turbulence in Russian history. She left Russia in 1922 with her daughter and her husband, Sergei Efron. In 1925 the family settled in Paris where they lived in poverty. In 1939 Tsvetaeva returned to the Soviet Union. Following the arrest of her husband and daughter, she hanged herself on August 31, 1941."--Publisher's website (viewed 05/16/2016).
• "A’Dora Phillips holds an MFA in Fiction from UMass Amherst and is currently pursuing a PhD in English (Creative Writing Fiction) at the University of Cincinnati. She taught writing for five years at UMass-Amherst and currently serves as an associate mentor in the City University of Hong Kong’s low-residency MFA program.In addition to writing, she studied traditional drawing and painting for many years, and has made her home in such places as Turkey, Romania, Italy, France, and the Czech Republic – experiences that inform her translation and writing."--Publisher's website (viewed 05/16/2016).
• "Gaëlle Cogan holds an M.A. in American Literature from the Université Paris IV-Sorbonne and a diploma in Literature and Languages from the École Normale Supérieure (Paris). She also studied Physical Therapy at the University of Health Sciences in Lausanne, with a particular interest in musicians' health. She currently lives and works as a physical therapist in Switzerland. Letter to the Amazon is her first translation."--Publisher's website (viewed 05/16/2016).

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

ISBN

9781937027698

OCLC

• 949925634
• SCSB-12328336

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library