RUSSIAN POETRY: A PERSONAL ANTHOLOGY. Selected and translated by R.A.D. Ford. Oakville (Ont), Mosaic Press, c1984. 93pp, paper, ISBN 0-88962-268-X (paperbound boards) $15.95, 0-88962-267-1 (paper) $8.95. CIP Grades 11 and up Reviewed by Pat Bolger Volume 13 Number 4 1985 July R.A.D. Ford, winner of the Governor General's award for poetry in 1956, spent many years as a Canadian diplomat in Russia, serving as ambassador from 1964 to 1980. It is difficult to imagine a Canadian more ideally qualified to produce an introduction to twentieth-century Russian poetry. The sixteen poets represented here include some already famous outside of the U.S.S.R., like Evtushenko, Mandelsh-tam, and Pasternak. The collection, however, % heavy reading and some of the work is banal: So forget now all your troubles, And don't grieve so much for me, In your old-fashioned winter coat, Don't go to the highway longingly. In other places, it declines into plodding prose: "As the experiments of/Kolmogorov showed, art cannot be programmed, and two/characteristics of man, his feeling for religion and poetry, cannot/be deduced." This handsomely produced volume (marred only by a few annoying spelling slips) is not likely to appeal to the average poetry reader, but could be useful in libraries where patrons have a special interest in Russian literature. Pat Bolger, Renfrew C.I., Renfrew, Ont.