This is the best book of translations of many poems of the great, initially Russian and then Soviet, poet O.E. Mandelstam, whose poetry should be now familiar to English speaking audience. Many previous translations of this poet do not preserve either his rhythm or the structure of his rhymes. Actually, they usually did ignore both. And the poetry is no poetry at all, when such main things are taken out of consideration. These translations preserve both and also the musicality of Mandelstam's poetry. To preserve the meaning of all contents of his poems were, of course, trying to achieve all previous translators. Many of them (actually, all of them) were doing it very often unsuccessfully. All of known previous translators did not have Russian background, and, therefore, often the correct understanding of meanings of Mandelstam's poems, as well. But this current translator has such background and can't make pertinent mistakes.