Powerful poems with a splendid translation
My poetry book club chose this book for discussion in February 2024. We found the poems deeply moving emotionally. The poems' structures and the voice of the speaker are distinctive. The seasons appear in many of the poems. In the first one, for example, the poem starts in winter, goes through spring, and ends in summer. I encourage readers to read Ilya Kaminsky's introduction to the collection because it is also marvelous. One of the most frequently anthologized of Zhadan's poems, "How did we build our homes?" is in this collection. Readers should also think about the placement of the first and last poems in the book - one introduces you, and the other bids farewell but at the same time tells you that nothing has changed. Excellent!
