Creator Bio
Elena Shvarts
1948–2010
Poet Elena Shvarts was born in St. Petersburg and raised in Leningrad. Her underground poems were circulated from the late 1960s, but her first Russian publication did not appear until 1984. A considerable body of her work has been translated. She was awarded the Andrei Bely Literary Prize (1979), the Petersburg Northern Palmyra Prize for literature (1999), and the Triumph Prize (2003).
Entries in the Posen Library by This Creator
Primary Source
Hasidic Motifs
A moon full of shimmering honey,
Exuding joy.
What bird beats in my heart?
Fly away—away, but not alone.
What am I shy? What?
Thick empyrean wine.
I’ll take a wicker bottle,
To the cemetery alone…