The Last Poet of the Village : Selected Poems by Sergei Yesenin Translated by Anton Yakovlev

The great 20th-century Russian poet Sergei Yesenin, while second in popularity with his countrymen only after Pushkin, is perhaps best known outside of his homeland for his brief marriage to Isadora Duncan. After their relationship broke up, Yesenin hung himself. His great contemporary rival, Vladimir Mayakovsky, wrote a poem "To Sergei Yesenin" castigating him for "taking the easy way out"-only to commit suicide himself (again, questionable) a few years later. Sadly, Yesenin, still immensely popular in the post-Soviet Union, has barely been translated into English.

Anton Yakovlev's most recent chapbook Chronos Dines Alone, winner of the James Tate Poetry Prize 2018, was published by SurVision Books. He is also the author of Ordinary Impalers (Kelsay Books, 2017) and two prior chapbooks. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Hopkins Review, Measure, Amarillo Bay, and elsewhere.