They knock on cupboards & ribs,steal mothballs from the wardrobe’s dim corners& patch them into their wings.They scream when the kettle boils.Their feet & fingers are webbed like geese.Some bake bran muffins in blue children’s aprons.The kitchen, powdered in bread flour, a cloud they glide through.Others wrestle the wind through a screen door.When the doorbell rings, they flap...
“Exile”: For Ilya Kaminsky
Being a Ukrainian abroad and being a Ukrainian at home today represent two different kinds of pain. Iryna Shuvalova, a Ukrainian poet and literature scholar, traveled from her native Kyiv to China, where she works as a college counselor, as tanks began to appear on Ukraine’s borders. I pretend death doesn’t exist but death is coming and death is buzzingover plum trees over cherries and quincethe...
“borderlands”
we stopped digging deep long agoin this uncertain field of ours-yoursbecause all kinds of junk can turn up:human bones, horses’ heads, unexploded mines* Halyna Kruk’s poems of war are gut-wrenching. She picks apart Ukrainian soil, unearthing the detritus of history. Ukraine’s fertile earth, known as “chernozem” or “black soil,” has been cultivated and coveted. The “breadbasket” of Europe was...
In the rearview, fog extinguishes the hills of newmoney—mansions on acres away from road or sight.Their architected privacy, windows to look out ata land that won’t look back. The fog’s secure drapery.It’s space to dance through they buy and what onemight call “dappled light” moving across their acres, lightthrough their oaks moving over their mares, brushed to a sheen. Palms of sugar cubes. Soft...
The 19th-century Ukrainian Romantic poet, Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861), wrote most of his powerful verse from exile. Born a serf, Shevchenko was (anomalously) sent by his master to study art. Fellow artists from Ukraine and Russia helped to raise money to buy his freedom. He later became a member of the Ukrainian “Brotherhood of Cyril and Methodius,” a group devoted to promoting Ukrainian self...
Eight new half-hour episodes of Poetry in America will begin airing on public television stations nationwide (check local listings) and on the World Channel starting in January 2022 and continuing through the spring. The series will also be available to stream on pbs.org, poetryinamerica.org, Amazon, and iTunes. The episodes focus on unforgettable American poems, which guests read and discuss...
“Night Sewing”
“Terra Inferna”