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April 2022 Vol. 59 No. 8

This exploration of the relation between photography and modern Russian poetry concentrates on four 20th-century poets: Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, Joseph Brodsky, and Bella Akhmadulina. In their work, photography is understood not as "art photography" but as snapshots, the ability to record photographically the intimate, often quotidian moments that illuminate the soul. Generously laden with references to photographic theory, the book opens philosophical premises based on the phenomenology of the photographic image. Moving beyond ekphrasis (literary description of a visual work), the book examines the uses of photography ("writing with light") as a metaphor for a representation of the subject that produces in readers/viewers a perceptive disturbance, or punctum—a term that Blasing (Russian studies, Univ. of Kentucky) takes from Roland Barthes (p. 8). The first four chapters focus on the specific ways in which photography intersects with the life and works of the four poets, beginning with Pasternak. Blasing uses detailed readings that expand to encompass the complex ties between perception and poetic consciousness. The concluding chapter examines new directions in the work of contemporary poets whose questioning of the image reflects changing photographic techniques. The book includes a bountiful selection of photographs closely related to the text. Poetry excerpts are presented in the original Russian with translations.

--W. C. Brumfield, Tulane University

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.