Its first canto begins, "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By the false azure of the windowpane." Its final canto is incomplete, as its poet was gunned down by Jacob Vinogradov shortly before writing the last line -- or so we are told by Charles Kinbote, a commentator who also happens to be completely insane. FTP, name this autobiographical poem by the nonexistent John Shade, the subject of a 1959 satire by Vladimir Nabokov.
Its first canto begins, "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/ By the false azure of the windowpane." Its final canto is incomplete, as its poet was gunned down by Jacob Vinogradov shortly before writing the last line -- or so we are told by Charles Kinbote, a commentator who also happens to be completely insane. FTP, name this autobiographical poem by the nonexistent John Shade, the subject of a 1959 satire by Vladimir Nabokov.
Its first canto begins, "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain/
{Pale Fire}