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37

When the goldfinch, in his airy confection,
Suddenly gets angry, begins to quake,
His spite sets off his scholar’s robes,
Shows to advantage his cute black cap.

And he slanders the hundred bars,
Curses the sticks and perches of his prison—
And the world’s turned completely inside out,
And surely there’s a forest Salamanca
For birds so smart, so disobedient.

December 1936

This Issue

January 14, 2016

Image of the January 14, 2016 issue cover.
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Osip Mandelstam

Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938) was persecuted for his poetry and died in a transit camp near Vladivostok, Russia. His poem in this issue is drawn from a new translation, Voronezh Notebooks, to be published by New York Review Books in January. (January 2016)

Andrew Davis

Andrew Davis’s books of poems include Craft and Bathysphere. His current project is the long poem “Impluvium.”
 (January 2016)

This Issue

January 14, 2016

Image of the January 14, 2016 issue cover.
All Contents

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