Sequoia in Bloom represents the first full-length collection of poet Sasha Nemirovskys work to appear in English. This bilingual edition of three-dozen poems, selected from a several-year span of the poets recent work, features translations by James Manteith, with contributions from Andrey Kneller. Also included is Manifesto of Jazz Poetry, explaining the music-inflected ethos in this book.
Sashas poems can sound easy; like songs can, they slide unapologetically between polish and rawness, folkie, jazzy, bluesy, classical, modern, unified by a feel for form, by controlled focus and flow. Yet the poems layered pleasures, mirrored in the challenges of translating them, belie the cost of their nuanced naturalness, the care behind the case they make succinctly on myriad levels (Translators Introduction).
