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Contributor

Larissa Miller

Contributor

Larissa Miller

Born in 1940, Larissa Miller was educated at the Foreign Languages Institute in Moscow and later taught at Moscow University. A major lyrical poet, she is the author of ten books, including Nameless Day; My Land and Home; Let’s Talk about the Paradoxes of Love; Holidays, Holidays; and Between the Cloud and the Pit. Dim and Distant Days (English translation published by Glas) is her book of memoirs, looking back over nearly five decades of Soviet history to her hungry but happy childhood in postwar Moscow; her coming of age as a Jewish girl in an anti-Semitic regime; and her encounters with the KGB as an English interpreter in the 1960s and again in the 1980s as the wife of the famous human rights activist Boris Altshuler. Her poems have been translated into English, French, Polish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Swedish. Guests of Eternity, Richard McKane’s translation of Between the Cloud and the Pit, was published in 2008 and received a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. The winner of several literary prizes, Miller was short-listed for the State Prize in 2000.

Articles by Larissa Miller

An Uncoincidence, a Noncoincidence
By Larissa Miller
Someone rushes to a house that's been moved away.
Translated from Russian by Richard McKane
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[“Well, let’s fly . . .”]
By Larissa Miller
“Well, let’s fly . . .”“Where to and why?”“Just fly to nowhereafter that cloud . . .”Just let’s rush off nowhere, nowhere,let’s listen to the wires…
Translated from Russian by Richard McKane
[Fate’s little pictures]
By Larissa Miller
Fate’s little picturesdrawn by a most slender pen,will hang in the damp airon a little spider’s web.The rains drawwith their own flying handwriting,and the wind shuffleslight strokes like…
Translated from Russian by Richard McKane
[All this moves and rustles]
By Larissa Miller
All this moves and rustles,plays and waves,dances blindly to someone’s pipeand crowns someone’s thought.It plays and singsand beckons with an apple branchand at times sweetly wounds the soul,at…
Translated from Russian by Richard McKane
[The wind revels in the quiet night…]
By Larissa Miller
The wind revels in the quiet night . . .The Lord has marked the coming dayin a black draft, so as to recreate iton a clean white copy, and the skywill be bright in a momentand will flare in a crimson…
Translated from Russian by Richard McKane
[“La vie,” Edith Piaf sings]
By Larissa Miller
“La vie,” Edith Piaf sings,“La vie, la vie,” seize the moment . . .And this voice is eternally rightand there’s no threat of it being buried in oblivion.“La vie,”…
Translated from Russian by Richard McKane