An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets by Polukhina, Valentina -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Cover Title Page Contents PREFACE INTRODUCTION A NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION BELLA AKHMADULINA

In the Botkin Hospital To Await Arrival

POLINA BARSKOVA

Evening at Tsarskoe Selo [The poet has passed away]

TATYANA BEK

[Beneath the flakes of Russian snow] [We’ve all got history on our hands …]

NATALYA BELCHENKO

[I’d happily survey the world] [It’s boring looking at the same old contents] [Chameleons are fine]

LARISA BEREZOVCHUK

[Calm rocks to sleep in your usual place]

MARINA BORODITSKAYA

[Now I am a fan of silence] Christmas Eve Sound Letter [So much gentleness from unknown men] [Poor composer]

EKATERINA BOYARSKIKH

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

ZINAIDA BYKOVA

[Close of day] At the Stop [Potatoes in flower]

SVETLANA DENGINA

Autumnal Equinox Russia

REGINA DERIEVA

[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

from Silence

IRINA ERMAKOVA

[… toward morning around seven] Gethsemane Lullaby for Odysseus

GALINA ERMOSHINA

[And also—the Minotaur, farmer, owner, respondent] [Autumn your bellringing, the apple of bright weeping]

ZOYA EZROKHI

A Day at Home Repetition

ELENA FANAILOVA

[Better this way: it’s you with nothing to hold on to] Frida’s Album (Frida Kahlo’s Album)

NINA GABRIELIAN

A Phoenician Statuette Tortoise from the cycle Erebuni

MARIYA GALINA

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

[I’m being stalked by a bird] [My eyes are]

ANNA GLAZOVA

solo the grant of death from Cities

LINOR GORALIK

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

NATALYA GORBANEVSKAYA

[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

[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

Three-Liners

FAINA GRIMBERG

[The reflection of a wet finger …]

ELENA IGNATOVA

[Then there was the rose I fell in love with] [To sob, pressing oneself against the officer’s greatcoat]

NINA ISKRENKO

Another Woman

OLGA IVANOVA

To Russian Women [Do I hold the past in my hands] [Time turned inside out] [I meet myself each and every day]

SVETLANA IVANOVA

[O caterpillar, daughter of the butterfly] [Bird, start up your moan, your whine] Subterranean River Poem

INNA KABYSH

Making Jam in July [Whenever the prodigal son returns home]

KATIA KAPOVICH

[Something from an untidy Russian life] [Parting makes simple sense]

SVETLANA KEKOVA

[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

[in the branches’ shade]

OLGA KHVOSTOVA

Flood Songs

MARIYA KILDIBEKOVA

[Pizza’s a populous island] [Everybody was going on talking the same talk]

NINA KOSSMAN

[A bomb said to a city] Cassandra to Agamemnon Backward Sound

ELENA KOSTYLEVA

[A vacancy instead of you]

IRINA KOVALEVA

[I can still make you out] [… And there was beauty]

ELLA KRYLOVA

The Pilgrims Cornflowers

MARINA KUDIMOVA

[Prison, zona, the camps, Taldái-Kustanái, and the low road] [The pleated strata of air]

INNA KULISHOVA

[Till now] [Total darkness]

YULIYA KUNINA

Inconsistent Self-Portrait

INGA KUZNETSOVA

[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

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

ELENA LAZUTKINA

[The wind’s mane] [I stand and inspect the phenomena drawn up] [Ruined so many romances]

INNA LISNIANSKAYA

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

[Shadows of the plane-tree leaves] [I catch the smell of beans]

MARA MALANOVA

Morning [Many films begin with a funeral] [Among the men some carved-bone dice are thrown] [Like a faded painting]

KSENIYA MARENNIKOVA

[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

[What does the river know of its own bed] [Night unwraps the true stuff of the world]

IRINA MASHINSKAYA

[So I stood by and watched] Newspapers on the Plateau

LARISA MILLER

[The light cross of lonely strolls] [Let’s fill in the form: date of birth] [The heavens are playing with the earth]

TATYANA MILOVA

[Sometimes, not often, it’s true] [… I’ve overslept my stop … the train will spit me out]

STELLA MOROTSKAYA

[morning sleep] [Screams and hair come out] Tomato

RAISA MOROZ

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

NEGAR

[Forgive me that I opened your door silently] Dust

OLESIA NIKOLAEVA

[Once I used to study languages dead for millennia] [You can go on holiday now, you can dabble in verse]

REA NIKONOVA

[The earth is burning] [Six charred leaves drift] [Along the threads of veins] [I sit over grief]

VERA PAVLOVA

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

[Tarantino’s languor and dreaming back] [Again sick] [In Juda desert]

LIUDMILA PETRUSHEVSKAYA

Poor Ruth

OLGA POSTNIKOVA

Archangel Cathedral

IRINA RATUSHINSKAYA

[Thus you lived your life without regret] [Penelope, the screaming is all over]

TATYANA RETIVOVA

Elegy to Atlantis

TATYANA RIZDVENKO

[Frost and sun, as needed] [It was such a pearly, pink season]

OLGA SEDAKOVA

Rain Sant’ Alessio, Roma In Memory of a Poet

EVELINA SHATS

[A rose] Sleep soundly, dear poet

TATYANA SHCHERBINA

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

[Sailor sailor got ashore] [The boy bears a gray shield] [Today I’m a proper king’s daughter]

ELENA SHVARTS

Memorial Candle

Conversation with a Cat

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

NATALYA STARODUBTSEVA

[Roundabouts solidly turn] [And it is cold here and a bit strange]

MARIYA STEPANOVA

Airman

DARYA SUKHOVEY

Spring Scales

OLGA SULCHINSKAYA

The Kite Crimea [The wind paces on the lower branch]

ELENA SUNTSOVA

[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

Wild Rose [He wouldn’t sign the death warrant] Silence

YANA TOKAREVA

Brief reflection on the greatness of God [Why is she sleeping on some steps] from On Russian Poetry (1996–2000)

ELENA VASILEVA

[I wish I could look] [I used to be your echo] [She’s calling God, she wants to ask Him]

EKATERINA VLASOVA

[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

[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)

[With grown-up clever hands] Shma Yisrael (Hear, O Israel)

GALI-DANA ZINGER

Strategy [I’m speaking to make you silent] Lamentation of the Border-Guard

OLGA ZONDBERG

[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 APPENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHY THE POETS THE TRANSLATORSTHE TRANSLATORS INDEX TO TITLES About the Author Copyright

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