Publisher's Synopsis
It took twenty-seven years for a complex of events, impressions and memories to distil into the title-poem of this collection. Based on a visit to Leningrad in 1965 and the shock of learning that Anna Ahkmatova was living in the flat above her guide's; drawing on remembered stories of her mother and aunt as young immigrants to New York City in the early years of the century, and on the overwhelming reality of Russian history, Ruth Fainlight uses many voices to give expression to so much rich material. There are meditations on the art of poetry, observations of the natural world - whether the sub-molecular realm of chaos theory, the geomorphic reality of continental drift or the habits of crepuscular moths, and examples of her characteristic subtle analysis of the shifting relationships between women and men.
