Derek Mong
Derek Mong is the author of two poetry collections from Saturnalia Books, Other Romes (2011) and The Identity Thief (forthcoming, 2018). He blogs at Kenyon Review Online, reviews new poetry for the Gettysburg Review, and will soon become the Byron K. Trippet Assistant Professor of English at Wabash College. A former Axton Fellow at the University of Louisville and Halls Poetry Fellow at the University of Wisconsin, he has a Ph.D. from Stanford University. His poetry, criticism, and translations have appeared in the Missouri Review, Poetry Daily, Two Lines, Pleiades, Crazyhorse, the Southern Review, and many other publications. He can be reached at www.derekmong.com.
The Joyous Science, Part 1
The True Story of the Famous Bruce, Composed in Verse from the Accounts of Several Eyewitnesses
by Maxim Amelin, translated from the Russian by Derek Mong and Anne O. Fisher
Maxim Amelin’s “The Joyous Science” chronicles the real and imagined exploits of Jacob Bruce (1669 – 1735), an astronomer, alchemist, and military strategist to Peter the Great. The poem is a mock epic, a biographical adventure, and a series of comedic set pieces that demonstrate how Amelin—in the words of the 2013 committee for the Solzhenitsyn Prize—has “expand[ed] the limits and possibilities” of Russian verse.
