Gennady Aygi’s poems are as pleasurable for the uniqueness and clarity of their crafting as they are for the spirit they express.

and - the fields - rise - into the sky from each star - there is - a course to every other - star

Gennady Aygi (1934-2006) is regarded as the Chuvash national poet. Relatively unpublished until the 1980s in the Soviet Union, he has been celebrated abroad, nominated for the Nobel Prize on multiple occasions, and translated into more than twenty languages.

Sarah Valentine is a poet and scholar who teaches at the University of California Riverside. This is her first book of translations.