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Sovpoems features Morgan's translations from the Russian of Pasternak, Tsvetayeva, Mayakovsky, Tikhonov, Martynov and Yevtushenko, plus translations of Brecht and Neruda. (Tikhonov's name is omitted on the title page.)

"Plenty of trite and doctrinaire verse, and plenty of bombastic and rhetorical verse, has come out of the communist world, but those who rest happily when they reach this point of discovery are deceiving themselves, since some of the finest poetry of the century – in Blok, Mayakovsky, Brecht, and Neruda, to mention only these – has also come from that world, and it is high time that people in the West began to examine this poetry and its implications for our society."

Edwin Morgan 'Introduction'

The book is dedicated to Frank Mason, "who first showed me the Russky Alphavit".

"Going back before the war, when I was a student, my closest friend [Frank Mason] was not gay, and I was absolutely in love with him, completely infatuated. (…) In fact, that was the only reason I took Russian, because he took Russian. (…) He was very political, he was communist in fact. (…) I just went along to the class but got interested right away, because of its literary and linguistic qualities. That friendship didn't come to anything."

Nothing Not Giving Messages (Polygon, 1990), p.168

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Sovpoems

1960s

Sovpoems features Morgan's translations from the Russian of Pasternak, Tsvetayeva, Mayakovsky, Tikhonov, Martynov and Yevtushenko, plus translations of Brecht and Neruda. (Tikhonov's name is omitted on the title page.)

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