Birds, Beasts and a World Made New

A wonderful parallel anthology and introduction to two poets, both so much more. They are the short-lived, playful, and visionary greats of Modernism: the Frenchman Guillaume Apollinaire and the Russian Velimir Khlebnikov. The translations are splendid and full of life, the context brisk, plain and simply sketched in. This is a book for discovery, for pleasure and delight

A wonderful parallel anthology and introduction to two poets, both so much more. They are the short-lived, playful, and visionary greats of Modernism: the Frenchman Guillaume Apollinaire and the Russian Velimir Khlebnikov. The translations are splendid and full of life, the context brisk, plain and simply sketched in. This is a book for discovery, for pleasure and delight

Recently I've been greatly moved by the war poems of Apollinaire (in Robert Chandler's translations). He finds connections in a bombardment of distractions and manages to be all-embracing in a world that is being blown apart. He attempts love poetry in the shadow of death

Guillaume Apollinaire and Velimir Khlebnikov did not know each other, but paired in Birds, Beasts and a World Made New, with commentary by the virtuoso translator Robert Chandler, they light bright flares - of affection, humour, defiance and hope

This unique anthology is like a curated museum exhibit... Chandler is a deft and esteemed translator of Russian

Robert Chandler's juxtaposition of the two poets in Birds, Beasts and a World Made New is an adroit one... Inventiveness abounds in these translations

Velimir Khlebnikov (1885-1922) was a Russian poet and playwright who played an important role in the Russian Futurist movement. Over his short career, he experimented freely with form and language, even inventing his own language, and is now recognized as one of the major Russian poets of his era. Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) was a French poet, novelist and critic of Polish descent. He became a leading figure of the Modernist avant-garde, influencing the development of Futurism, Cubism, Dadaism and Surrealism, and his work is celebrated for its formal innovation.