Poetry Depot

Chilean Poet Nicanor Parra won the 2011 Miguel de Cervantes Prize

romanianbodies — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 18:59:10 +0000

Nicanor Parra, the Chilean poet and mathematician who seeks to demystify poetry and make it accessible to a wider audience, has won the 2011 Miguel de Cervantes Prize.

Organizers of the world’s highest Spanish-language literary honour announced Parra, 97, as the winner on Thursday in Madrid.

Born into a well-known family of artists, writers and performers (including his famed folk singer sister Violeta), Parra graduated from the University of Chile and became a professor of mathematics and physics in 1938.
(…)
Worth €125,000 (nearly $171,500 Cdn), the Cervantes Prize honours a Spanish-language writer for his or her body of work and is among the world’s most lucrative literary awards. Past recipients have included Spain’s Ana Maria Matute, Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa and Mexico’s Octavio Paz.

CBC

Young Poets

Write as you will
In whatever style you like
Too much blood has run under the bridge
To go on believing
That only one road is right.

In poetry everything is permitted.

With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.

Test

What is an antipoet
Someone who deals in coffins and urns?
A general who’s not sure of himself?
A priest who believes in nothing?
A drifter who finds everything funny
Even old age and death?
A speaker you can’t trust?
A dancer at the edge of a cliff?
A narcissist who loves everyone?
A joker who goes for the jugular
And is mean just for the hell of it?
A poet who sleeps in a chair?
A modern-day alchemist?
An armchair revolutionary?
A petit-bourgeois?
A fake?
a god?
a naive person?
A peasant from Santiago, Chile?
Underline the right answer.

What is antipoetry
A tempest in a teapot?
A spot of snow on a rock?
A tray piled high with human shit
As Father Salvatierra believes?
A mirror that doesn’t lie?
A slap in the face
Of the president of the Writers’ Society?
(God save his soul)
A warning to young poets?
A jet-propelled coffin?
A coffin in centrifugal orbit?
A coffin run on kerosene?
A funeral parlor without a corpse?

Put an X
Next to the right answer.

Translated by David Unger

Test

Qué es un antipoeta:
Un comerciante en urnas y ataúdes?
Un sacerdote que no cree en nada?
Un general que duda de sí mismo?
Un vagabundo que se ríe de todo
Hasta de la vejez y de la muerte?
Un interlocutor de mal carácter?
Un bailarín al borde del abismo?
Un narciso que ama a todo el mundo?
Un bromista sangriento
Deliberadamente miserable?
Un poeta que duerme en una silla?
Un alquimista de los tiempos modernos?
Un revolucionario de bolsillo?
Un pequeño burgués?
Un charlatán?
Un dios?
Un inocente?
Un aldeano de Santiago de Chile?
Subraye la frase que considere correcta.

Qué es la antipoesía:
Un temporal en una taza de té?
Una mancha de nieve en una roca?
Un azafate lleno de excrementos humanos
Como lo cree el padre Salvatierra?
Un espejo que dice la verdad?
Un bofetón al rostro
Del presidente de la Sociedad de Escritores?
(Dios lo tenga en su santo reino)
una advertencia a los poetas jóvenes?
Un ataúd a chorro?
Un ataúd a fuerza centrífuga?
Un ataúd a fuerza centrífuga?
Un ataúd a gas de parafina?
Una capilla ardiente sin difunto?

Marque con una cruz
La definición que considere correcta.

“¿Qué es poesía?” , se pregunta Parra. El mismo se responde:
“La fundación del ser por la palabra
Todo lo que se mueve es poesía
Lo que no cambia de lugar es prosa
Pero ¿qué es poesía? Todo lo que nos une es poesía
Sólo la prosa puede separarnos
Sí, pero ¿qué es poesía?
Vida en palabras
Un enigma que se niega a ser descifrado
Por los profesores
Un poco de verdad y una aspirina
Antipoesía eres tú”

Khaled Mattawa, contemporary Libya-born poet

romanianbodies — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 18:14:43 +0000

Khaled Mattawa was born in Benghazi, Libya where he had his primary education. In 1979 he emigrated to the United States. He lived in the South for many years, finishing high school in Louisiana and completing bachelors degrees in political science and economics at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. He went on to earn an MA in English and an MFA in creative writing from Indiana University where he taught creative writing and won an Academy of American Poets award. (from webdelsol) He translated into English from Arabic contemporary poets like Adonis, Saadi Youssef, Joumana Haddad or Iman Mirsal.
Last week, Khaled Mattawa read his latest piece, entitled “After 42 Years,” performed in the aftermath of Gaddafi’s death.

After 42 years

Five years old when the dictator took over in a coup —

curfew shut our city down

Bloodless coup, they said —

The many who thought this could be good.

The dictator, a young man, a shy recluse assumed the helm, bent in piety,

the dead sun of megalomania hidden in his eyes.

Could not go to the store to buy bread or newspaper,

could not leave home, visit friends,

the radio thundering hatred, retching blood-curdling song —

Signs that went unread

Factories built and filched, houses stolen, newspapers shut down,

decades of people killed, 42 years.

But that’s all over now —

How can you say over when it took 42 years —

I was five when the dictator took my brother away

Over now, 42 years, must look ahead.

His face half blood-covered, half smirking

Like Batman’s Joker,

hands raised, fingers pressed together upward

(full poem at LA Times)

Ernesto Cardenal – contemporary poet from Nicaragua

romanianbodies — Mon, 30 May 2011 18:53:55 +0000

b. 1925 Ernesto Cardenal is a major poet of the Spanish language well known in the United States as a spokesman for justice and self-determination in Latin America. Cardenal, who recognizes that poetry and art are closely tied to politics, used his poetry to protest the encroachments of outsiders in Nicaragua and supported the revolution that overthrew Somoza in 1979. Once the cultural minister of his homeland, Cardenal spends much of his time as “a kind of international ambassador,” noted Richard Elman in the Nation.

(from poetry fundation)

Waldman writes of Cardenal’s work as being “a Whitmanesque embrace and also a timely political and spiritual resonance with the particularly difficult and early-broken-hearted new century…His optimism is constantly radiating with a scholarly wonder.”

Ernesto Cardenal (b. 1925), widely acknowledged as Latin America’s greatest living poet, will visit with students, read from his works and sign copies of his newest collection of poems at 12 U.S. and Canadian campuses, including Naropa University. The author of more than thirty-five books, many of which have been translated into multiple languages, Nicaraguan poet Ernesto Cardenal was ordained as a Roman Catholic priest in 1965. His studies with Trappist monk Thomas Merton and his involvement with the Sandinista movement in his home country have informed his writing and political activism. He lives in Managua, Nicaragua, where he is vice president of Casa de los Tres Mundos, a literary and arts cultural organization.

Ernesto Cardenal is recognized as one of the most urgent and eloquent voice in a country of poets and revolutionaries, a cultural icon whose life and writings have altered history.

Cardenal’s poetry is impure, defiantly, in that it unites political ugliness and the beauty of imaginative vision. —Robert Bly

One of the world’s major poets. —Choice

Cardenal is a major epic-historical poet, in the grand lineage of Central American prophet Rubén Darío. —Allen Ginsberg

One of the most influential (and controversial) poets of his generation. —Robert Hass

from naropa university

Prayer for Marilyn Monroe
Translated from the Spanish
by Jonathan Cohen
[Reading by Cardenal ]

Lord
receive this young woman known around the world as Marilyn Monroe
although that wasn’t her real name
(but You know her real name, the name of the orphan raped at the age of 6
and the shopgirl who at 16 had tried to kill herself)
who now comes before You without any makeup
without her Press Agent
without photographers and without autograph hounds,
alone like an astronaut facing night in space.

She dreamed when she was little that she was naked in a church

(according to the Time account)before a prostrated crowd of people, their heads on the floor
and she had to walk on tiptoe so as not to step on their heads.
You know our dreams better than the psychiatrists.
Church, home, cave, all represent the security of the womb
but something else too …
The heads are her fans, that’s clear
(the mass of heads in the dark under the beam of light).
But the temple isn’t the studios of 20th Century-Fox.
The temple—of marble and gold—is the temple of her body
in which the Son of Man stands whip in hand
driving out the studio bosses of 20th Century-Fox
who made Your house of prayer a den of thieves.

Lord
in this world polluted with sin and radioactivity
You won’t blame it all on a shopgirl
who, like any other shopgirl, dreamed of being a star.
Her dream just became a reality (but like Technicolor’s reality).
She only acted according to the script we gave her
—the story of our own lives. And it was an absurd script.
Forgive her, Lord, and forgive us
for our 20th Century
for this Colossal Super-Production on which we all have worked.
She hungered for love and we offered her tranquilizers.
For her despair, because we’re not saints
psychoanalysis was recommended to her.
Remember, Lord, her growing fear of the camera
and her hatred of makeup—insisting on fresh makeup for each scene—
and how the terror kept building up in her
and making her late to the studios.

Like any other shopgirl
she dreamed of being a star.
And her life was unreal like a dream that a psychiatrist interprets and files.

Her romances were a kiss with closed eyes
and when she opened them
she realized she had been under floodlights
as they killed the floodlights!
and they took down the two walls of the room (it was a movie set)
while the Director left with his scriptbook
because the scene had been shot.
Or like a cruise on a yacht, a kiss in Singapore, a dance in Rio
the reception at the mansion of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

all viewed in a poor apartment’s tiny living room.
The film ended without the final kiss.
She was found dead in her bed with her hand on the phone.
And the detectives never learned who she was going to call.
She was
like someone who had dialed the number of the only friendly voice
and only heard the voice of a recording that says: WRONG NUMBER.
Or like someone who had been wounded by gangsters
reaching for a disconnected phone.

Lord
whoever it might have been that she was going to call
and didn’t call (and maybe it was no one
or Someone whose number isn’t in the Los Angeles phonebook)

You answer that telephone!

from (http://www.myspace.com/mjweido/blog/493982638 )

From a Terrace in Prague – International poetry on Prague

romanianbodies — Sat, 14 May 2011 11:32:11 +0000

From a Terrace in Prague is an anthology of poems about Prague written by Czech and international poets who have lived in Prague or visited the city and wrote about it. Ranging from 1888 to 2010, with poems translated into English from 16 languages, the anthology is unparalleled in scope.

The contributors are: Muhammad Mahdi Al-Jawahiri, Guillaume Apollinaire, Michal Ajvaz, Louis Armand, Ingeborg Bachmann, John Berryman, Petr Bezruc, Konstantin Biebl, Anthony Blake, Ivan Blatny, Egon Bondy, Kamil Bouska, Jiri Brynda, Michael Carter, Paul Celan, Vera Chase, Inger Christensen, Christopher Crawford, Svatopluk Cech, Roque Dalton, Bei Dao, Jas H. Duke, Vincent Farnsworth, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Viola Fischerova, Gil Fleishman, Carolyn Forche, Frantisek Gellner, Allen Ginsberg, Frantisek Halas, Vaclav Havel, Nazim Hikmet, Karel Hlavacek, Vladimir Holan, Miroslav Holub, Josef Hora, Petr Hruska, Jaroslav Hutka, Ivan Martin Jirous, Richard Katrovas, Jane Kirwan, Jiri Kolar, Claudiu Komartin, Petr Kral, Martin Langer, David Lehman, Phillis Levin, Larry Levis, Robert Lowell, Antonin Macek, Josef Svatopluk Machar, Ian MacNeill, Sergej Makara, Radek Maly, Jason Mashak, Wojciech A. Maslarz, Iggy McGovern, Edwin Muir, Pablo Neruda, Vitezslav Nezval, Ladislav Novak, Tiago Patricio, Katerina Pinosova, Marie Pujmanova, Justin Quinn, James Ragan, Donald Revell, Tereza Riedlbauchova, Rainer Maria Rilke, Byambin Rinchen, Katerina Rudcenkova, Ed Sanders, James Schuyler, Jaroslav Seifert, David Shapiro, Phil Shoenfelt, Gary Snyder, Philippe Soupault, Antonin Sova, Viktor Spacek, Marcela Sulak, Pavel Srut, Mark Terrill, Karel Toman, Jachym Topol, John Tranter, Seisuke Tsukahara-Watasi, Marina Tsvetaeva, Razvan Tupa, Anne Waldman, Vera Weislitzova, Jiri Wolker, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Jiri Zacek, and Adam Zagajewski.

ABOUT THE EDITOR: Stephan Delbos is a New England-born poet living in Prague, where he teaches at Anglo-American University and Charles University, and works as Culture Editor for The Prague Post. His poetry, essays and translations have appeared most recently in Absinthe, Agni, Atlanta Review, Fourteen Hills, Financial Times, Full Metal Poem, Grasp, New Letters, Oxonian Review, Poetry International, Poetry Salzburg Review, Rakish Angel, Return of Kral Majales, Vlak, and Zoland Poetry.

Digital poetry, the poetry of the XXIst century, highlighted in a new study and anthology

romanianbodies — Wed, 04 May 2011 20:16:54 +0000

Jorge Luiz Antonio presents a panorama of digital poetry in Brazil and in the world

There are many ways of making poetry nowadays, but the one that mostly engages the new technologies of language is digital poetry. In Digital Poetry: Theory, History, Anthologies, Jorge Luiz Antonio presents a panorama of digital poetry history, from its origins, in 1959, until our days with the most advanced and creative innovations. The author shows how the resources of computer science, apparently cool and exact, can give new life to the universe of poetry when taking their producers and appreciators to the other artistic directions inside digital culture.

For Jorge Luiz Antonio his Digital Poetry: Theory, History, Anthologies is a book that “studies a type of contemporary poetry in its relationship with the arts, design and computational technology, which is a continuation and an unfolding of avant-garde, concrete, visual, and experimental poetry”. According to the Portuguese poet E.M. de Melo e Castro, the work has “clearly the intention and the author’s accomplishment of a discussion about the reasons that can be invoked for the study of the transformations that the use of the technologies is already causing in the concept of poetry”.

Digital poetry: theory, history, anthologies comes accompanied by a DVD that gathers a complete anthology of digital poems and their predecessors, introducing 501 poems of 226 poets and 110 theoretical texts of 73 authors, Brazilians and foreigners, with about 1500 printed and electronic pages, giving a rare panorama of what has already been done in the area of poetic experimentation, in Brazil and in other countries. The DVD shows that “poetry, art, design, science and digital technology form the transdisciplinary quintet that a portion of the contemporary poets chose to accomplish their poetic communication”, as Jorge Luiz Antonio says.

(Franklin Valverde, Onda Latina, Brazil)

Digital poetry: Theory, History, Anthologies is a co-edition of Navegar Press (São Paulo, Brazil), Luna Bisonte Prods (Columbus, Ohio, USA), FAPESP (The State of Sao Paulo Research Foundation (São Paulo, Brazil) and the Author.

On the author: Jorge Luiz Antonio, university teacher, researcher, FAPESP scholarship, post-doctor in IEL-UNICAMP, is also the author of studies on Cesario Verde and Augusto dos Anjos.

Digital Poetry: Theory, History, Anthologies

by Jorge Luiz Antonio

Ulf Stolterfoht, contemporary German poet

romanianbodies — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:31:49 +0000

Ulf Stolterfoht has studied German literature and philology in Tübingen and Bochum.
Even before the publication of his debut volume in 1998, his poems already appeared in various journals and anthologies.
Winner of the PEN Award For Poetry In Translation, 2008
Lingos takes as its playground all the cultural baggage of our turn of the century and examines it with a mix of deconstruction, parody and sheer exuberance. The poems flaunt their intent to avoid linearity, prefabricated meaning and the lyrical I. Instead, they cultivate irony, punning, fragmenting, juxtaposing, distorting, and subject everything to an almost compulsive humor — the author and his own methods included.
Ulf Stolterfoht was born in 1963 in Stuttgart and now lives in Berlin with his wife and three children. His 3 books of poems are all called Fachsprachen [lingos, jargons, technical terms] and are all published by Urs Engeler Editor:

Fachsprachen I-IX (1998), Fachsprachen X-XVIII (2002), which received the Hans-Erich-Nossack-Förderpreis and the Christine Lavant-Preis respectively, and most recently, in 2004, Fachsprachen XIX-XXVII, for which he received the Anna-Seghers-Prize in 2005 and a stipendium to the German Academy in Rome.
From 2008 to 2009 he was professor at the German Literature Institute in Leipzig.
Stolterfoht lives in Berlin.
From Burning Deck.

JARGONS IV (2)

what still remains of “songless” — “an earnest bird”

brings up. no earnest bird discusses what

seemed essentially the fact. he as it were cancels

himself out. you mentally shake your head. you nod.

you say i see. this must the essence of negation be.

and what’s confusing at a second glance:… NO X

HORSES (… carry you away) at a third holds

up and fast. no one horse holds so fast.

eleven horses or else nine: carry

you away. just as no ten. they hold you

fast. then let’s have at it at no zero

horses — to sidle/bridle up! a matter

(to remove last lingering doubts): not not to be

neglected. not to forget: forgotten. to

hunger. simply done. resolved: to cut

the bread. forgets. is now (the bread harder

and harder) to cut to be called to “saw”?

may your speech be yea yea / nay nay!

what’s likewise hard to clarify: if probably perhaps

exists. tendency: perhaps. probably not.

but here you quickly stand alone. and can’t help make

a stand for “nonsense absolute” as having making

sense some. unprofitable enterprise: not only not

to say not / to do un. but then its beauty too.

Lirikline

Other Poems can be read in the Fascicle.

ELISABETH RYNELL: Contemporary Swedish Poetry

romanianbodies — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:47:17 +0000

ELISABETH RYNELL was born in 1954 in Stockholm. Her father was a professor of English and her mother a nurse. After completing the comprehensive school in and around the capital city, she worked as an au pair in London and later settled in the north of Sweden, in Lycksele. Ms. Rynell debuted with the poetry collection Lyrsvit m.m. med gnöl (Poetry Suite etc. with Grumbling, 1975). Her first novel, entitled Veta hut (For Shame, 1979) appeared in 1979. Nattliga samtal (NightConversations, 1990) contains both poems and prose pieces. A recurring theme in the volume is the grieving for a life companion hastily taken away. Her last book, the novel Hohaj (1997), set in Norrland, Sweden’s northern wilderness, has a rather mythical quality. Ms .Rynell’s writing is distinguished by a strong emotional intensity, openness and sensuality. Other works include the poetry volumes Onda dikter (Evil Poems, 1980), Sorgvingesång (Sorrow Winged Songs, 1985), Sjuk fågel (Sick Bird, 1988), and Öckenvandrare (Desert Wanderer, 1993), and the novel En berättelse om Loka (A Tale About Loka, 1990). (from Columbia edu)

from

Nocturnal Conversations

Something of light
I cannot describe
Maybe love’s hands
Your skin like a drink
I don’t know

I wake into the nightmare
and I walk inside it
It is real, material
and I walk and walk

You left your dead
body behind you

And we stood and looked at it

And we did not know
what we should do with it

(…)

translated from the Swedish by Rika Lesser

(from Asymptote journal)

Ko Un, Major Contemporary Poet from Korea

romanianbodies — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 01:24:39 +0000

Ko Un (born on 1 August or 11 April 1933) is a South Korean poet. His works have been translated and published in more than 15 countries and he has been imprisoned many times.^[1] Un is often considered a likely winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature,^[2] so much so that reporters have camped outside his house ahead of the annual announcement.^[1]^{[3] (from wiki)}

Ko Un was a witness to the devastation of the Korean War. He volunteered for the People’s Army, but was rejected because he was underweight.

He became a Zen Buddhist monk in the 1950s, and returned to secular life sometime in the 1960s.

Ko Un became an activist opposing the harsh and arbitrary rule of South Korea’s president, President Park Chung-hee. His dissident activities led to several terms of imprisonment and torture.

The democratization of South Korea in the late 1980s finally gave Ko Un the freedom to travel to other countries, including a visit to the United States and make a spiritual journey through India. (from Poetry Chaikhana)

A Long Night

We put up a tent for the night
between Shigatse and Latse.
As soon as the tent was up
a storm broke.
The tent shook as if about to fly away.

The water rose
up the river bank,
and with it the loud sound of the stream.

Shortly before, our water had boiled at 80 Centigrade.
Not anything like 100.
My anxiety and resignation had boiled away with it.

Already unrecallable sights have been swept away.
The sound of the river rose louder still.
The only thing left for me was to be swept away in the swollen stream.
I recalled my wife’s face.
I recalled my daughter’s face.
I had absolutely no use for things like truth.

translated from the Korean by Brother Anthony of Taizé and Lee Sang-Wha

from Asymptote Journal

Again About Poetry and Arab Revolution

romanianbodies — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:16:32 +0000

CNN presented this image where Egyptian popular poet Ahmad Fu'ad Nigm rallies attendants during a public meeting organized by the opposition movement 'Writers and Artists for Change' in a main plaza in Cairo, August 2005.

According to CNN, poetry is an important part for the revolution from Egypt too. A venerable contemporary poet being in the cener of public protests.
Monday night at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, writers Reza Aslan, Azar Nafisi and Nathan Englander will take part in a panel, “Literature and Revolution in the Middle East” – on how poetry and novels have been used to fight for revolution throughout the Middle East—from Israel to Iran to Egypt.

ONLY ON THE BLOG: Answering today’s five OFF-SET questions is one of those panelists, Dr. Aslan, a contributing editor at the Daily Beast, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and How to Win a Cosmic War” and editor of Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East.”

By now we’ve heard that protesters in various Middle East countries are using Twitter and Facebook to coordinate anti-regime activities. But are you saying that demonstrators, including the many young people who have been protesting, are being informed by literature—by poems and novels?

What I am saying is that their very identity is being formed by the literature that is so much a part of the cultural awareness of the peoples of the Middle East. They are using social media to communicate and organize, but using poetry to define who they are.

What countries are you talking about–and tell us more how the poetry is being used.

So for instance, during the Jasmine Revolution in Tunisia, the great Tunisian poet Abu al-Qasim al–Shabbi—his verses were being transformed in slogans and chants by the protesters.

According to the website Arabic Literature (in English), one of his poem’s “Life’s Will” begins…

When people choose
To live by life’s will,
Fate can do nothing but give in;
The night discards its veil,
All shackles are undone.
Whoever never felt
Life celebrating him
Must vanish like the mist;
Whoever never felt
Sweeping through him
The glow of life
Succumbs to nothingness.

The same thing happened in Egypt with the septuagenarian poet Ahmad Fu’ad Nigm–his poetry was also being used as slogans and chants.

According to the website jadaliyya.com, one of his poems translates this way:

I am the People

I am the people, marching, and I know my way
My struggle is my weapon, my determination my friend
I fight the nights and with my hopes’ eyes
I determine where true morning lies

I am the people, marching, and I know my way
I am the people.
My hand lights life
Makes deserts green, devastates tyrants
Raising truths, banners on guns
My history becomes my lighthouse and comrade

I am the people, marching, and I know my way
No matter how many prisons they build
No matter how much their dogs try to betray
My day will break and my fire will destroy
Seas of dogs and prisons out of my way

I am the people and the sun is a rose in my sleeve
The day’s fire horses galloping in my blood
My children will defeat every oppressor
Who can stand in my way?

I am the people, marching, and I know my way.

The point being–this is a region in which–because of the limitations on the freedom of speech and freedom of the press—literature, and poetry in particular, become the avenue through which people’s frustatrations and their aspirations can be communicated, through symbols and metaphors.

read full article on CNN

Polina Barskova: contemporary Russian poet

romanianbodies — Mon, 28 Feb 2011 03:37:38 +0000

Polina Barskova, Ph. D. was born in 1976 in Leningrad. She graduated at Berkeley, University of California. Barskova has published several collections of poetry, her first at the age of fifteen: Christmas (1991). Another four collections of poetry followed, A Squeamish Race (1993), Memory (1996), Evradei and Orfika and Arias. Candidate in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures (Berkeley), she was awarded the Townsend Dissertation Writing Fellowship for 2005.06. The topic of her dissertation is Writing the End: Literature and Culture of the Aesthetic Opposition in Leningrad (1921.1934).

As a child she was recognized as a prodigy. She began publishing poems in journals at age nine and, sought out by a publishing house, released the first of her six books at the ripe old age of 15.

She came to the United States at 20, in order to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, after having already completed a degree in classical literature at St. Petersburg State University.

Three years ago Dr. Barskova joined the faculty of Hampshire College as assistant professor of Russian literature. Her classes are packed and teaching reviews by students achieve similar soaring acclaim as critics’ reviews of her writing. Under her influence students have formed the Hampshire Poetry Group, meeting monthly to read to each other. (from hampshire college)

Manuscript Found by Natasha Rostova During the Fire
I will try to live on earth without you.
I will try to live on earth without you.
I will become any object,
I don’t care what—
I will be this speeding train.
This smoke
or a beautiful gay man laughing in the front seat.
A human body is defenseless
on earth.
It’s a piece of fire-wood.
Ocean water hits it.
Lenin puts it on his official shoulder.
And therefore, in order not to suffer, a human spirit
lives
inside the wind and inside the wood and inside the shoulder of a great dictator.
But I will not be water. I will not be a fire.
I will be an eyelash.
A sponge washing your neck-hairs.
Or a verb, an adjective, I will become. Such a word
slightly lights your cheek.
What happened? Nothing.
Something visited? Nothing.
What was there you cannot whisper.
No smoke without fire, they whisper.
I will be a handful of smoke
over this lost city of Moscow.
I will console any man,
I will sleep with any man,
under the army’s traveling horse carriages.

Published by Guernica in a translation by Ilya Kaminsky

An entire book of her poems translated can be read here.