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"The armed conflict in the east of Ukraine brought about an emergence of a distinctive trend in contemporary Ukrainian poetry: the poetry of war. Directly and indirectly, the poems collected in this volume engage with the events and experiences of war, reflecting on the themes of alienation, loss, dislocation, and disability; as well as justice, heroism, courage, resilience, generosity, and forgiveness. In addressing these themes, the poems also raise questions about art, politics, citizenship, and moral responsibility. The anthology brings together some of the most compelling poetic voices from different regions of Ukraine. Young and old, female and male, somber and ironic, tragic and playful, filled with extraordinary terror and ordinary human delights, the voices recreate the human sounds of war in its tragic complexity"-- Machine generated contents note: Preface -- Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky -- Introduction: "Barometers" -- Ilya Kaminsky -- ANASTASIA AFANASIEVA -- she says we don't have the right kind of basement in our building -- You whose inner void -- from Cold -- She Speaks -- On TV the news showed -- from The Plain Sense of Things -- Untitled -- Can there be poetry after -- VASYL HOLOBORODKO -- No Return -- I Fly Away in the Shape of a Dandelion Seed -- The Dragon Hillforts -- I Pick up my Footprints -- BORYS HUMENYUK -- Our platoon commander is a strange fellow -- These seagulls over the battlefield -- When HAIL rocket launchers are firing -- Not a poem in forty days -- An old mulberry tree near Mariupol -- When you clean your weapon -- A Testament -- YURI IZDRYK -- Darkness Invisible -- Make Love -- ALEKSANDR KABANOV -- This is a post on Facebook, and this, a block post in the East -- How I love -- out of harm's way -- A Former Dictator -- He came first wearing a t-shirt inscribed "Je suis Christ" -- In the garden of Gethsemane on the Dnieper river -- A Russian tourist is on vacation -- Fear is a form of the good -- Once upon a time, a Jew says to his prisoner, his Hellenic foe -- KATERYNA KALYTKO -- They won't compose any songs, because the children of their children -- April 6 -- This loneliness could have a name, an Esther or a Miriam -- Home is still possible there, where they hang laundry out to dry -- He Writes -- Can great things happen to ordinary people? -- LYUDMYLA KHERSONSKA -- Did you know that if you hide under a blanket and pull it over your head -- How to describe a human other than he's alone -- The whole soldier doesn't suffer -- A country in the shape of a puddle, on the map -- Buried in a human neck, a bullet looks like a eye, sewn in -- that's it: you yourself choose how you live -- I planted a camellia in the yard -- One night, a humanitarian convoy arrived in her dream -- When a country of -- overall -- nice people -- Leave me alone, I'm crying. I'm crying, let me be -- the enemy never ends -- every seventh child of ten -- he's a shame -- you really don't remember Grandpa -- but let's say you do -- BORIS KHERSONSKY -- explosions are the new normal, you grow used to them -- all for the battlefront which doesn't really exist -- people carry explosives around the city -- way too long the artillery and the tanks stayed silent in their hangars -- when wars are over we just collapse -- modern warfare is too large for the streets -- my brother brought war to our crippled home -- Bessarabia, Galicia, 1913-1939 Pronouncements -- MARIANNA KIYANOVSKA -- I believed before -- in a tent like in a nest -- we swallowed an air like earth -- I wake up, sigh, and head off to war -- The eye, a bulb that maps its own bed -- Their tissue is coarse, like veins in a petal -- Things swell closed. It's delicious to feel how fully -- Naked agony begets a poison of poisons -- HALYNA KRUK -- A Woman Named Hope -- like a blood clot, something catches him in the rye -- someone stands between you and death -- like a bullet, the Lord saves those who save themselves -- OKSANA LUTSYSHYNA -- eastern europe is a pit of death and decaying plums -- don't touch live flesh -- he asks -- don't help me -- I Dream of Explosions -- VASYL MAKHNO -- February Elegy -- War Generation -- On War -- On Apollinaire -- MARJANA SAVKA -- We wrote poems -- Forgive me, darling, I'm not a fighter -- january pulled him apart -- OSTAP SLYVYNSKY -- Lovers on a Bicycle -- Lieutenant -- Alina -- 1918 -- Kicking the Ball in the Dark -- Story (2) -- Latifa -- A Scene from 2014 -- Orpheus -- LYUBA YAKIMCHUK -- Died of Old Age -- How I Killed -- Caterpillar -- Decomposition -- He Says Everything Will Be Fine -- Eyebrows -- Funeral Services -- Crow, Wheels -- Knife -- SERHIY ZHADAN -- from Stones -- "We speak of the cities we lived in." -- "Now we remember: janitors and the night-sellers of bread." -- from Why I'm not on Social Media -- Needle -- Headphones -- Sect -- Rhinoceros -- They buried him last winter -- Three Years Now We've Been Talking about the War -- "A guy I know volunteered." -- "Three years now we've been talking about the war." -- "So that's what their family is like now." -- "Sun, terrace, lots of green." -- "The street. A woman zigzags the street." -- "Village street -- gas line's broken." -- "At least now, my friend says." -- Thirty-Two Days Without Alcohol -- Take Only What Is Most Important -- A city where she ended up hiding -- Afterword: "On Decomposition and Rotten Plums: Language of War in Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry" -- Polina Barskova -- Authors -- Translators -- Glossary -- Geographical Locations and Places of Significance -- Notes to Poems -- Acknowledgements -- Acknowledgement of Prior Publications
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