Divided into two sections, “Right Angle” and “On the Edge of Sleep,” Inna Lisnyanskaya’s collection of lyrics is both grounded in reality and visionary, as the titles suggest. The poems date from as early as 1966-68, but over half were written in 1983...

The tripartite book Stikhi / Poems / Poèmes contains original poems in Russian, followed by English and French translations. Each section consists of a two-page introduction by Joseph Brodsky, an autobiographical sketch in prose by the author...

The same impeccable scholarship that marks the author’s edition of the poetry of Sofia Parnok (Ardis, 1978) is here brought to bear on the elusive relation of life to art in the year-and-a-half-long sexual friendship between two of Russia’s great modern women poets...