Beyond the Limit - Tapa dura

"Irina Ratushinskaya...gives an emotional X-ray of a moment, an experience, which, while foreign to virtually all who encounter it on the page, turns suddenly intimate." --Michael Heim "Irina Ratushinskaya's extraordinary poems are a poet's argument with the conscience of her own people. As such, they are part of a great international literature of dissent. These poems flash with imagery, wit, fury, and love of life. Reading them, I draw on their energy for my own struggles as a North American, and am the more convinced that poetry--in effective translation--is the great telepathic boundary-breaker." --Adrienne Rich

English translations accompany the original Russian texts of poems about conscience, imprisonment, exile, survival, hope, despair, betrayal, winter, and freedom.