Learning Russian

by Diana Fitzgerald Bryden

Does the past mean only what we want it to? Can anything at all be learned from a photgraph of a scrap of forgotten language? In Learning Russian, Diana Fitzgerald Bryden asks these and other questions with clear-eyed, compelling honesty, as she examines the seductive lure of the past. Rejecting easy nostalgia, she uncovers the roots of home in the hidden life of cities, in the family ties to the living and the dead, and in language itself through the work of the writers who inspire her. The poems of Learning Russian are haunted and haunting, infused with longing and the certainty of loss, they show what can be recovered, or made new, through poetry.

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

Reviews

[baubleblob · Rating 4 out of 5]

Picked this collection up randomly at a used book sale because of the title, and then read the first page and had to get it. It's almost uncanny how accurately the first poem 'Learning Russian' describes my own experience with heritage and belonging, I almost felt like I was reading about myself. Bryden is also from Toronto, (another coincidence)! The rest of the poems were (thankfully) not so eerily relatable but still very atmospheric and personal, like walking down someone else's memory lane.