Korovkin is described as “a brilliant and ferocious poet whose furious, defiant but consistently classical and supremely elegant poetry, controlled and yet fluid, draws, without ever becoming heavy, on a very rich and varied cultural patrimony” (Franca Rovigatti, Roma Poesia 1998). His last book of poetry to-date is Fields of Vision: Selected Poems and The Soldier’s Tale (2014). It consists of 14 poems whose programmatic direction is best attested to by the title of the first piece of the volume: Looking for Faith. A large section of the book is occupied by The Soldier’s Tale: a completely new rendering of the fable used by Stravinsky for the homonymous suite and inspired by the latter. It bears the subtitle A Narcissus Variation — narcissism in contemporary society is a topic that Korovkin repeatedly turns to both in his poetry and prose.
