SOURCE: Ramp, Philip. “Review of Selected Poems by Attilio Bertolucci and ‘Paradise’: Selected Poems by Elena Shvarts.” Critical Survey 6, no. 3 (1994): 392-96.

In the following review, Ramp praises the verse in ‘Paradise’: Selected Poems as measured yet invigorating.

The poetry of Elena Shvarts is about as far removed from the world of Attilio Bertolucci as it is possible to get. She is speaking of a ‘city laid out like a carcass / In the grip of savage anguish’. This city is, of course, St Petersberg—Petrograd—Leningrad—but it is also the great, dark, turbulent ‘soul’ of Russia we are all so familiar with from Russian literature. Shvarts takes us once more through the myth and mysticism, innocence and guile, despair and derision, brooding and blarney with which the Russians treat Russia. It is a testimony to her power and skill as a poet that the journey is invigorating rather...