About the Teacher

 

Marin has a Masters degree in Slavic Languages and Literatures. While working on her Ph.D she read Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin in Russian. She had read Charles Johnston's English translation as an undergrad and had never been so absorbed by poetry in her life. When studying the Russian original she began to grasp the way the pattern of the Onegin stanza was part of the reason for the effect and was even more astounded that it could be carried over into English.

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Taken by the idea that by following the pattern she could write something like that, she started writing her own, and has been doing so for almost ten years. She added an extra foot to make the tetrameter into pentameter...just because...maybe because it seemed more "substantial" since she was only writing one at a time here and there and not a whole novel in verse! 

 

She hopes she can share some of what this has given to her with you.