An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets Read online

  AN ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY RUSSIAN WOMEN POETS

  EDITED BY VALENTINA POLUKHINA

  AND DANIEL WEISSBORT

  PREFACE BY STEPHANIE SANDLER

  Contents

  Title Page

  Preface by Stephanie Sandler

  Introduction by Daniel Weissbort

  A Note on Transliteration

  BELLA AKHMADULINA

  translated by Catriona Kelly

  In the Botkin Hospital

  To Await Arrival

  POLINA BARSKOVA

  translated by Peter France

  Evening at Tsarskoe Selo

  [The poet has passed away]

  TATYANA BEK

  translated by Robert Reid

  [Beneath the flakes of Russian snow]

  [We’ve all got history on our hands …]

  NATALYA BELCHENKO

  translated by Robert Reid

  [I’d happily survey the world]

  [It’s boring looking at the same old contents]

  [Chameleons are fine]

  LARISA BEREZOVCHUK

  translated by Richard McKane

  [Calm rocks to sleep in your usual place]

  MARINA BORODITSKAYA

  translated by Ruth Fainlight

  [Now I am a fan of silence]

  Christmas Eve

  Sound Letter

  [So much gentleness from unknown men]

  [Poor composer]

  EKATERINA BOYARSKIKH

  translated by Richard McKane

  [A person is reflected by the whirlpool, not the face]

  ZINAIDA BYKOVA

  translated by Robert Reid

  [Close of day]

  At the Stop

  [Potatoes in flower]

  SVETLANA DENGINA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  Autumnal Equinox

  Russia

  REGINA DERIEVA

  translated by Kevin Carey, Alan Shaw

  [I don’t feel at home where I am]

  [Beyond Siberia again Siberia]

  [On the sea-shore, smell of iodine]

  Theory of Recruiting

  MARINA DOLIA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  from Silence

  IRINA ERMAKOVA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [… toward morning around seven]

  Gethsemane

  Lullaby for Odysseus

  GALINA ERMOSHINA

  translated by Gerald Janecek

  [And also—the Minotaur, farmer, owner, respondent]

  [Autumn your bellringing, the apple of bright weeping]

  ZOYA EZROKHI

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  A Day at Home

  Repetition

  ELENA FANAILOVA

  translated by Stephanie Sandler

  [Better this way: it’s you with nothing to hold on to]

  Frida’s Album (Frida Kahlo’s Album)

  NINA GABRIELIAN

  translated by Peter France

  A Phoenician Statuette

  Tortoise

  from the cycle Erebuni

  MARIYA GALINA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  Ghazal

  [What, in July’s honey heat, do you weep for, poor goy]

  [I said to him—Just don’t throw me into that briar patch]

  DINA GATINA

  translated by Chris Jones

  [I’m being stalked by a bird]

  [My eyes are]

  ANNA GLAZOVA

  translated by Max Nemtsov

  solo

  the grant of death

  from Cities

  LINOR GORALIK

  translated by the author, revised by Robert Reid

  [Here I am]

  [Every few weeks I see there is an empty chair in our local nursery]

  NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA

  translated by Elizabeth Krizenesky Daniel Weissbort

  [I will not be able to explain why]

  [The rhymes picked me in a ditch]

  [What I drink is not hot, not sweet]

  [We live—sometimes]

  Notes of a Cold War Veteran

  [Epiphanies]

  ANNA GORENKO

  translated by Peter France

  [There the folk museum alone lies in its embers]

  [Flowers live faster than rotting of cherries]

  [death covers up nakedness]

  [houses like piles of children’s books]

  Translated from the European

  NINA GORLANOVA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  Three-Liners

  FAINA GRIMBERG

  translated by Richard McKane

  [The reflection of a wet finger …]

  ELENA IGNATOVA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [Then there was the rose I fell in love with]

  [To sob, pressing oneself against the officer’s greatcoat]

  NINA ISKRENKO

  translated by Stephanie Sandler

  Another Woman

  OLGA IVANOVA

  translated by Jenefer Coates

  To Russian Women

  [Do I hold the past in my hands]

  [Time turned inside out]

  [I meet myself each and every day]

  SVETLANA IVANOVA

  translated by Jenefer Coates, Angela Livingston

  [O caterpillar, daughter of the butterfly]

  [Bird, start up your moan, your whine]

  Subterranean River Poem

  INNA KABYSH

  translated by Fay Marshall and Alex Marshall

  Making Jam in July

  [Whenever the prodigal son returns home]

  KATIA KAPOVICH

  translated by Richard McKane

  [Something from an untidy Russian life]

  [Parting makes simple sense]

  SVETLANA KEKOVA

  translated by Ruth Fainlight

  [Space is arched like a sail]

  [With much effort, I glimpse in the darkness and rubbish]

  [Running water is cold, the river from Eden flows east]

  [The tsar sits on his throne as if he sat on bones]

  [Look, a man is flying and]

  [Already, no more suffering, no]

  MARINA KHAGEN

  translated by Linor Goralik

  [in the branches’ shade]

  OLGA KHVOSTOVA

  translated by Tatyana Retivova

  Flood Songs

  MARIYA KILDIBEKOVA

  translated by Roy Fisher

  [Pizza’s a populous island]

  [Everybody was going on talking the same talk]

  NINA KOSSMAN

  translated by the author

  [A bomb said to a city]

  Cassandra to Agamemnon

  Backward Sound

  ELENA KOSTYLEVA

  translated by Max Nemtsov

  [A vacancy instead of you]

  IRINA KOVALEVA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [I can still make you out]

  [… And there was beauty]

  ELLA KRYLOVA

  translated by Yury Drobyshev and Carol Rumens

  The Pilgrims

  Cornflowers

  MARINA KUDIMOVA

  translated by Catriona Kelly

  [Prison, zona, the camps, Taldái-Kustanái, and the low road]

  [The pleated strata of air]

  INNA KULISHOVA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [Till now]

  [Total darkness]

  YULIYA KUNINA


  translated by Richard McKane

  Inconsistent Self-Portrait

  INGA KUZNETSOVA

  translated by Max Nemtsov

  [speech is a stream]

  [I’m trying to fit my destiny into]

  [repairs are like the fall of Pompeii]

  [for a centenary]

  [a seagull shrilly in my head]

  [breadcrumbs falling from the table]

  A Wand

  EVGENIYA LAVUT

  TRANSLATED BY YURY DROBYSHEV AND CAROL RUMENS

  About Love

  [In the body of the town I’m a pupil]

  ELENA LAZUTKINA

  translated by Robert Reid

  [The wind’s mane]

  [I stand and inspect the phenomena drawn up]

  [Ruined so many romances]

  INNA LISNIANSKAYA

  translated by Ruth Fainlight, Daniel Weissbort

  Ode to the Computer

  [Between hope and failure]

  [Like the earth turning, I creak, and dream]

  Triptych of Reflection

  Jealousy

  [Quiet days and quiet evenings]

  SVETA LITVAK

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [Shadows of the plane-tree leaves]

  [I catch the smell of beans]

  MARA MALANOVA

  translated by Nika Skandiaka

  Morning

  [Many films begin with a funeral]

  [Among the men some carved-bone dice are thrown]

  [Like a faded painting]

  KSENIYA MARENNIKOVA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [I, Mariya, burn your fingers]

  [Mother, squatting hurts]

  [Don’t let me leave you, I may die]

  [my head is spinning to the right]

  OLGA MARTYNOVA 

  translated by Elaine Feinstein

  [What does the river know of its own bed]

  [Night unwraps the true stuff of the world]

  IRINA MASHINSKAYA

  translated by the author

  [So I stood by and watched]

  Newspapers on the Plateau

  LARISA MILLER

  translated by Richard McKane

  [The light cross of lonely strolls]

  [Let’s fill in the form: date of birth]

  [The heavens are playing with the earth]

  TATYANA MILOVA

  translated by Robert Reid

  [Sometimes, not often, it’s true]

  [… I’ve overslept my stop … the train will spit me out]

  STELLA MOROTSKAYA

  translated by Vitaly Chernetsky

  [morning sleep]

  [Screams and hair come out]

  Tomato

  RAISA MOROZ

  translated by Max Nemtsov

  [There’s a cinnamon tree that grows on the Moon]

  NEGAR

  translated by Richard McKane

  [Forgive me that I opened your door silently]

  Dust

  OLESIA NIKOLAEVA

  translated by Catriona Kelly

  [Once I used to study languages dead for millennia]

  [You can go on holiday now, you can dabble in verse]

  REA NIKONOVA

  translated by Gerald Janecek

  [The earth is burning]

  [Six charred leaves drift]

  [Along the threads of veins]

  [I sit over grief]

  VERA PAVLOVA

  translated by Maura Dooley and Terence Dooley, Jason Schneiderman, Steven Seymour, Derek Walcott, Daniel Weissbort

  Grass

  Heaven and Earth

  from Signs of Life

  [This is the way a row of official tulips]

  [And God saw]

  [On the way to you]

  [Armpits smell of linden blossom]

  from Letter from Memory

  ALEKSANDRA PETROVA 

  translated by Dennis Silk

  [Tarantino’s languor and dreaming back]

  [Again sick]

  [In Juda desert]

  LIUDMILA PETRUSHEVSKAYA 

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  Poor Ruth

  OLGA POSTNIKOVA

  translated by Richard McKane

  Archangel Cathedral

  IRINA RATUSHINSKAYA

  translated by C. J. K. Arkell, Alan Myers

  [Thus you lived your life without regret]

  [Penelope, the screaming is all over]

  TATYANA RETIVOVA

  translated by the author

  Elegy to Atlantis

  TATYANA RIZDVENKO

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [Frost and sun, as needed]

  [It was such a pearly, pink season]

  OLGA SEDAKOVA

  translated by Catriona Kelly, Robert Reid

  Rain

  Sant’ Alessio, Roma

  In Memory of a Poet

  EVELINA SHATS

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [A rose]

  Sleep soundly, dear poet

  TATYANA SHCHERBINA

  translated by J. Kates, Derek Walcott, Daniel Weissbort

  About Limits

  [Except for love everything]

  [They cut off my hot water]

  [What’s it you’re howling, siren-telephone]

  [Where are the future’s clawlets?]

  [Tell me, Comrade God, how can life, over this stretch]

  IRINA SHOSTAKOVSKAYA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [Sailor sailor got ashore]

  [The boy bears a gray shield]

  [Today I’m a proper king’s daughter]

  ELENA SHVARTS

  translated by James McGavran, Stephanie Sandler

  Memorial Candle

  Conversation with a Cat

  A Portrait of the Blockade through Genre Painting, Still Life, and Landscape

  NATALYA STARODUBTSEVA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [Roundabouts solidly turn]

  [And it is cold here and a bit strange]

  MARIYA STEPANOVA

  translated by Richard McKane

  Airman

  DARYA SUKHOVEY

  translated by Christopher Mattison

  Spring Scales

  OLGA SULCHINSKAYA

  translated by Richard McKane

  The Kite

  Crimea

  [The wind paces on the lower branch]

  ELENA SUNTSOVA

  translated by Nika Skandiaka

  [Beyond is where the passersby end]

  [as old salts know]

  [city of summer you inhabit a fluff-light city of little claws]

  [as you and i stand long]

  VITALINA TKHORZHEVSKAYA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  Wild Rose

  [He wouldn’t sign the death warrant]

  Silence

  YANA TOKAREVA

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  Brief reflection on the greatness of God

  [Why is she sleeping on some steps]

  from On Russian Poetry (1996–2000)

  ELENA VASILEVA

  translated by Max Nemtsov

  [I wish I could look]

  [I used to be your echo]

  [She’s calling God, she wants to ask Him]

  EKATERINA VLASOVA

  translated by Peter France

  [A little sympathy]

  [On an old grand piano]

  [I see]

  [Create me a world]

  [There is a way to sew wings on arms]

  TATYANA VOLTSKAYA

  translated by Catriona Kelly, Richard McKane, Daniel Weissbort

  [The low clouds, the shreds of dry grass]

  [Rhyme is a woman, trying on clothes]

  [God is the first snow. He is a leaf, a mosquito]

  GALINA ZELENINA (GILA LORAN)

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

&nb
sp; [With grown-up clever hands]

  Shma Yisrael (Hear, O Israel)

  GALI-DANA ZINGER

  translated by the author, edited by Ashraf Noor

  Strategy

  [I’m speaking to make you silent]

  Lamentation of the Border-Guard

  OLGA ZONDBERG

  translated by Daniel Weissbort

  [The variety of animals, said Khlebnikov]

  [cockle-antarctica]

  [they all but cry out]

  [there were lots of them]

  [To die. And be born as an inspector of playgrounds for tiny tots]

  Postface A Poet’s by View Elena Fanailova

  Appendix The Vavilon Project and Women’s Voices Among The Young Literary Generation by Dmitry Kuzmin

  Bibliography

  The Poets

  The Translators

  Index To Titles

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PREFACE

  STEPHANIE SANDLER

  Anna Akhmatova may be the reason you opened this book. Her name springs first to the minds of Americans who know much about Russian poetry, if I may draw on an entirely unscientific sample of my own chance conversations over the years. Russia must have the only world literature whose poetry has been represented by a woman, an oddity that grows when one realizes that Russia in fact had two great women poets early in the twentieth century: Marina Tsvetaeva may be less known abroad, but only because her linguistic wizardry nearly defies translation. In Russia they command equal respect, and generations of writers have looked to both as exemplary lyric poets.

  Some Russian poets look back to Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva as proof that women more than hold their own with men as poets. Thus in “Evening at Tsarskoe Selo,” a poem you will find in this volume, Polina Barskova describes Akhmatova walking through a park where Akhmatova had imagined Aleksandr Pushkin walking a century earlier. In Barskova’s poem, Akhmatova is preoccupied by an unfinished poem, and she pays little attention to her male companion. Barskova wittily rewrites the myth of Akhmatova as a love poet and makes her first and foremost a poet, someone whose mind and heart are taken up with poetry more than with any lover. In another poem you will find here, Olga Sedakova also turns to Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva as poets, although by means of the briefest mention. She adds a footnote to “In Memory of a Poet” telling readers that she has drawn on the poetic traditions of both Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova; their mediation has given form and intonational nobility to a poem memorializing her great contemporary Joseph Brodsky.

  These two examples show Akhmatova as muse to later women poets, but she and Tsvetaeva can also, paradoxically, cast a long shadow. Some poets may wonder which is the greater danger, seeking the lofty, stern harmonies of Akhmatova or risking comparison with the wilder linguistic experimentation of Tsvetaeva. Not for nothing did the poet Yunna Morits once see them as Scylla and Charybdis. For her, the Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova traditions had to be circumnavigated. Happily, the women poets included here have avoided one risk, repeating the biographical fates of these two poets, which included exile and later suicide for Tsvetaeva and the doom of seeing loved ones imprisoned for both Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova. Later poets were blessed by the kinder turn of Russian history. No one has had an exile as difficult as Tsvetaeva’s years abroad, and younger poets live more easily in Rome, Jerusalem, Paris, or New York, even if their financial circumstances can be uncertain. Life outside Russia is no longer a form of exile: poets are finally free to visit Russia (this was not true before the late 1980s, which shapes the creative biography of those who left earlier, like Irina Ratushinskaya and Natalya Gorbanevskaya). Today Russian poets living abroad can have intensive, ongoing contact with poetic traditions in Russia itself. They see fellow poets and can travel to Russia if they wish, and the Internet and e-mail have made it easy to remain informed even at a great distance. We in the West have luckily heard some of them read, both those who emigrated and those visiting from Russia; poetry festivals or book fairs in New York, London, Frankfurt, and many smaller cities as well as tours by individual poets have brought their voices very much to life for American and European audiences.