House on Fontanka

the long version

Poetry. In 1992 Earl S. Braggs won the Anhinga Prize, selected by Marvin Bell, for *Hat Dancer Blue*. In 1998, supported by a summer fellowship from the University of Tennessee, he travelled to Russia. *House on Fontanka* is the product of that trip to Russia. Braggs' foreword indicates the tone and context of his new book perfectly: I would remember Langston Hughes' trip to Russia and the Negro in the American South movie, intended but never made. I would remember Claude McKay's speech to the Com-Intern and the book of essays America refused to publish. But he goes on, Braggs writes, to find my love had also grown into the profile of Anna Akmhmatova sitting quietly on the banks of the Black Sea... The pages of this book are crowded by people whom he loves like lost and found brothers and sisters. The pages of this book are flooded by love. Acoridng to the poet's own definition, this book is a 'guided, but unguarded tour' -- Yevgeny Yevtushenko