Stanley Burnshaw (1906–2005)

Generally speaking I regard Bloch as a very capable writer, but too grim for my taste (Psycho etc.). The stories involve a parody of interaction between traditional medieval fantasy --knights, dragons etc. and the modern world, as represented by Thin Tommy's Bar, a setting not unlike Gavagan's Bar in De Camp and Pratt or Robinson's Callahan's Cross-time Saloon. Bloch has added an afterword explaining how he wrote these stories under the influences of Damon Runyon and Thorne Smith.

Poems in the original text with prose translations into English.

A wonderful bilingual anthology; my first exposure to modern poetry in French, Spanish, German, and Italian, and the one Blok poem included helped get me interested in Russian.