Help me track down a volume of Nabokov's poetry

January 29, 2005 12:00 AM

Can you help me track down a volume of Nabokov's poetry? I know such volumes exist, you just can't buy them on any store I've looked at online. Thanks!
posted by adrober to Writing & Language (5 answers total)

I think you can buy such volumes, but they are expensive
abebooks
posted by gnat at 12:37 AM on January 29, 2005

You could also try the more shady route by checking out this ebay listing.
posted by icontemplate at 3:34 AM on January 29, 2005

Why is that shady?

You could always learn Russian; I picked up a Russian edition of his early poems in Brighton Beach for a buck last year. And it really is worth learning Russian to be able to read VV's prose, if not necessarly his poetry, which is nice but not Pushkin or Mandelshtam.
posted by languagehat at 7:13 AM on January 29, 2005

Well, I'll be damned. I picked up Nabokov's "Poems and Problems" for $5 CDN at a used bookstore last week -- thought nothing of it. Now it seems that the cheapest copy on Alibris is over $80. Ditto for for Amazon.
posted by ori at 1:01 PM on January 29, 2005

I like Bookfinder, which searches used bookstores all across the world. A search for Nabokov as author and "poems" in the title field turned up an $18 copy of the 1959 Poems illustrated edition, multiple $40 copies listed under a slightly different title, multiple $85+ versions of the later Poems and Problems, which Wikipedia says includes Poems, and a few other oddities. Looks like ori really scored with his $5 copy.

Bookfinder is the search engine I turn to first, for what it's worth. My day job's in Raleigh's oldest and strangest used bookstore, for what that's worth, too.
posted by mediareport at 5:04 PM on January 29, 2005