"...With enthusiasm I have translated the second part of Baba Summer, and I am convinced that you have found a very original genre form-an organic combination of a diary that grows into deep fictional prose, which, acquiring aesthetic tension, is suddenly crowned with poetic explosions. Literally, in front of the reader's eyes, high literature is born out of fluid everyday life. By the way, you are here, perhaps unconsciously, connecting to the Russian tradition. Turgenev, in his speech about Pushkin, recalled: "Your poetry," Merimee, a famous French poet of his era, is looking first of all, at truth, and then beauty in itself; our poets on the other hand take a completely opposite path, They are primarily concerned with effect, wit, brilliance, and if they have the opportunity not to offend plausibility, they will probably take this into the bargain. In Pushkin, he added, poetry miraculously blossoms, as it were, by itself from the most sober prose." It is "the miracle of the birth of poetry from the most sober prose" that you, Judy, present to the readers in your book." - Professor Yuri Lebedev, Emeritus, formerly Chair of the Literature Program at Kostroma University in Kostroma, Russia.
Baba Summer: Part Two is the second of four memoirs about Judy Hogan's experiences with Russian writers and painters 1990-1996. She has published twelve Penny Weaver mystery novels. Grace: A China Diary, 1910-16, which she edited and annotated, was published by Wipf and Stock (2017), and seven volumes of poetry were published, including, Those Eternally Linked Lives (2018). Her papers and 40 years of diaries are in the Sallie Bingham Center for Women's History and Culture, Duke University. She founded and edited Carolina Wren Press, 1976-1991. She has taught creative writing since 1974 and lives and farms in Moncure, N.C., where she works on environmental issues.
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