A bilingual poetry collection translated from the Ukrainian by Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris, Letters of the Alphabet Go to War is Lesyk Panasiuk’s remarkable account of living in Bucha, Ukraine, during the apex of war and brutality at the hands of the Russian military. The result is a tremendous work that The Guardian describes as embodying "the idea of the rupture of language through the physical collapse of signs and lettering on buildings hit by missiles." This slim book bears great weight.
Arvustused
Lesyk Panasiuk's chilling "In the Hospital Rooms of My Country,: in a tense, crackling translation by Kaminsky and Katie Farris, observes a language passing through extreme violence: The language in a time of war / can't be understood. Inside this sentence / is a holeno one wants to dieno one / speaks."
Uilleam Blacker, The Times Literary Supplement
If war involves a fracturing of language, it is poetry that will eventually creep in to fill the gaps... Lesyk Panasiuk has produced poetry that embodies the idea of the rupture of language through the physical collapse of signs and lettering on buildings hit by missiles.
Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian
Letters of the alphabet go to war, Lesyk Panasiuk reports; in the Ukrainian alphabet, he finds a beloved graphic landscape and a perilous materiality: Through the broken window of / the letter other countries watch how the letter i / loses its head, how the roof of the letter / falls through.
Christopher Spade, Poetry Foundation
7 In the Hospital Rooms of My Country
9 Our Faces, Tossed about This Land
19 A Wartime Dream
21 Aubade
23 Empty Case
27 A Shoe Full of Water: A Diary of a Return
37 October
41 Music Underground
45 Russian Accordion
49 Reading instructions
53 Icon
55 Little Palm
59 Prayer to the Road
61 The Most Ordinary Day
63 Exhibit
65 Lightbulbs
67 Turbines of Hydroelectric Plants
71 Afterword by Ilya Kaminsky and Katie Farris
83 Notes
86 About the Author & Translators
Lesyk Panasiuk is the author of three collections of poetry. His poetry has been translated into 24 languages, published in Ukrainian and foreign magazines and anthologies, set to music, and used within theater productions, performances and exhibitions worldwide. Panasiuk has been a fellow of the Stipend of President of Ukraine (Ukraine, 2019), International Writers and Translators House (Ventspils, Latvia, 2019), House of Europe (Ukraine, 2019), Staromiejski Dom Kultury (Poland, 2021), Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society (USA, 2022), Dartmouth College (USA, 2022), Literary Colloquium Berlin (Germany, 2022), and PEN Ukraine (Ukraine, 2023).
Katie Farris is the author of the memoir-in-poems, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive from Alice James Books (US) and Liverpool University Press (UK), which was listed as one of Publishers Weeklys "Top 10 Poetry Books for 2023." Most recently she was the winner of the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and Poetry, and has been commissioned by MoMA. She is the co-translator of several books of poetry from the Ukrainian, French, Chinese, and Russian.
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translator of many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). His work won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, among other honors.
