Field-Russia

Lifelong Aygi translator and friend Peter France wrote in The Guardian: “Aygi wrote from a deep awareness of the losses and destructions of the 20th century.” Field-Russia is a book of poems arranged shortly before Aygi’s death, which in his view occupied a central place in his work. The collection opens with an informal conversation about poetry, and is followed by a series of little lyric “books”–Field-Russia, Time of the Ravines, and Final Departure–that form a part of Aygi’s “life-book.” Like Ahkmatova and Celan before him, Aygi has left us with these most necessary words to dwell in–a quiet, spiritual poetry in a time of uprootedness and despair.