This book follows the texts established for Collected Poems in English (2000), and readers are referred to that volume for annotation and bibliographic information. Where no translator is given, Brodsky composed the poem in English. He prefaced his first book, A Part of Speech, with thanks to Ann Frydman, Masha Vorobiova, and Stephen White for preparing interlinear versions of his poems, and thanked Jonathan Aaron, Nancy Meiselas, Margo Picken, David Rieff, Pat Strachan, Peter Viereck, and, “above all,” Barry Rubin and Derek Walcott, “for their suggestions, proofreading, and assistance with certain references.” He noted, “I have taken the liberty of reworking some of the translations to bring them closer to the original, though perhaps at the expense of their smoothness. I am doubly grateful to the translators for their indulgence.”