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Dancing in Odessa
Winner of the 2002 Dorset Prize, and recipient of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, Ilya Kaminsky is a Ukrainian-Jewish-Russian immigrant and rising poetic star. Despite the fact that he is a non-native writer, Kaminksy's sense of rhythm and lyric surpasses that of most contemporary poets in the English language. This magical, musical book of poems draws readers into its unforgettable heart, and Carolyn Forche writes simply "I am in awe of his gifts."
58 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2004
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About the author
Ilya Kaminsky
63 books447 followersIlya Kaminsky is the Poetry Editor of Words Without Borders. His awards include a Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry magazine and first place in the National Russian Essay Contest. He is the author of Dancing in Odessa which won the Dorset Prize.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 231 reviews
December 18, 2023
Then my mother begins to dance, re-arranging
this dream. Her love
is difficult. Loving her is simple as putting raspberries
in my mouth.
Dancing in Odessa is the first full book of poems (there was a chapbook, and there are several other books on related topics, collections with others) from Ilya Kaminsky; the second, Deaf Republic, I also read and reviewed here recently. I found this first volume on the whole wonderful, reading it through slowly once, then again and again. And will again.
Dancing in Odessa
We lived north of the future, days opened
letters with a child’s signature, a raspberry, a page of sky.
My grandmother threw tomatoes
from her balcony, she pulled imagination like a blanket
over my head. I painted
my mother’s face. She understood
loneliness, hid the dead in the earth like partisans.
The night undressed us (I counted
its pulse) my mother danced, she filled the past
with peaches, casseroles. At this, my doctor laughed, his granddaughter
touched my eyelid—I kissed
the back of her knee. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail.
And my classmate invented twenty names for Jew.
He was an angel, he had no name,
we wrestled, yes. My grandfathers fought
the German tanks on tractors, I kept a suitcase full
of Brodsky’s poems. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail.
At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived.
We lived, yes, don’t say it was a dream.
At the local factory, my father
took a handful of snow, put it in my mouth.
The sun began a routine narration,
whitening their bodies: mother, father dancing, moving
as the darkness spoke behind them.
It was April. The sun washed the balconies, April.
I retell the story the light etches
into my hand: Little book, go to the city without me.
Odessa was named with Odysseus in mind, an explorer's gift, a writer's treasure, in some ways. The collection is composed of five sections. The first, “Dancing in Odessa,” is about war and his home in the Ukraine. It’s what one can expect of a first book by a poet who left his home town and country to live in the U.S. This section is pretty bleak, as it depicts an oppressive regime, though there is also this:
This is how we live on earth, a flock of sparrows.
The darkness, a magician, finds quarters
behind our ears. We don’t know what life is,
who makes it, the reality is thick
with longing. We put it up to our lips
and drink.
The second section, first published as a chapbook, is “Musica Humana: an Elegy for Osip Mandelstam,” about the great Russian poet who was oppressed (as were a few million others) by Stalin’s regime. This is the first of poetic touchstones, odes, Kaminsky writes to his great influences. These, as much as Odessa itself, are home for him.
Section three, “Natalia,” is a sequence of love poems. Here’s a fragment to get a flavor:
I want her to imagine our scandalous days in Odessa when we will open a small
sweets shop–except for her lovers and my neighbors (who steal milk chocolate in
handfuls) we will have no customers. In an empty store, dancing among stands with
sugared walnuts, dried carnations, boxes upon boxes of mints and cherries dipped in
honey, we will whisper to each other our truest stories.
The fourth section, “Traveling Musicians” pays tribute to four of Kaminsky’s central influences: Paul Celan, Joseph Brodsky, Isaac Babel, and Marina Tsvetaeva. Kaminsky is a poet in the tradition of symbolist poets such as Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam, and Anna Akhmatova, who are also featured in the book elsewhere.
The book concludes with a long poem called “Praise,” tying some of the various themes of the book together. I highly recommend it, as do I his second, darker book.
The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail.
At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived.
We lived, yes, don’t say it was a dream.
this dream. Her love
is difficult. Loving her is simple as putting raspberries
in my mouth.
Dancing in Odessa is the first full book of poems (there was a chapbook, and there are several other books on related topics, collections with others) from Ilya Kaminsky; the second, Deaf Republic, I also read and reviewed here recently. I found this first volume on the whole wonderful, reading it through slowly once, then again and again. And will again.
Dancing in Odessa
We lived north of the future, days opened
letters with a child’s signature, a raspberry, a page of sky.
My grandmother threw tomatoes
from her balcony, she pulled imagination like a blanket
over my head. I painted
my mother’s face. She understood
loneliness, hid the dead in the earth like partisans.
The night undressed us (I counted
its pulse) my mother danced, she filled the past
with peaches, casseroles. At this, my doctor laughed, his granddaughter
touched my eyelid—I kissed
the back of her knee. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail.
And my classmate invented twenty names for Jew.
He was an angel, he had no name,
we wrestled, yes. My grandfathers fought
the German tanks on tractors, I kept a suitcase full
of Brodsky’s poems. The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail.
At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived.
We lived, yes, don’t say it was a dream.
At the local factory, my father
took a handful of snow, put it in my mouth.
The sun began a routine narration,
whitening their bodies: mother, father dancing, moving
as the darkness spoke behind them.
It was April. The sun washed the balconies, April.
I retell the story the light etches
into my hand: Little book, go to the city without me.
Odessa was named with Odysseus in mind, an explorer's gift, a writer's treasure, in some ways. The collection is composed of five sections. The first, “Dancing in Odessa,” is about war and his home in the Ukraine. It’s what one can expect of a first book by a poet who left his home town and country to live in the U.S. This section is pretty bleak, as it depicts an oppressive regime, though there is also this:
This is how we live on earth, a flock of sparrows.
The darkness, a magician, finds quarters
behind our ears. We don’t know what life is,
who makes it, the reality is thick
with longing. We put it up to our lips
and drink.
The second section, first published as a chapbook, is “Musica Humana: an Elegy for Osip Mandelstam,” about the great Russian poet who was oppressed (as were a few million others) by Stalin’s regime. This is the first of poetic touchstones, odes, Kaminsky writes to his great influences. These, as much as Odessa itself, are home for him.
Section three, “Natalia,” is a sequence of love poems. Here’s a fragment to get a flavor:
I want her to imagine our scandalous days in Odessa when we will open a small
sweets shop–except for her lovers and my neighbors (who steal milk chocolate in
handfuls) we will have no customers. In an empty store, dancing among stands with
sugared walnuts, dried carnations, boxes upon boxes of mints and cherries dipped in
honey, we will whisper to each other our truest stories.
The fourth section, “Traveling Musicians” pays tribute to four of Kaminsky’s central influences: Paul Celan, Joseph Brodsky, Isaac Babel, and Marina Tsvetaeva. Kaminsky is a poet in the tradition of symbolist poets such as Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam, and Anna Akhmatova, who are also featured in the book elsewhere.
The book concludes with a long poem called “Praise,” tying some of the various themes of the book together. I highly recommend it, as do I his second, darker book.
The city trembled,
a ghost-ship setting sail.
At night, I woke to whisper: yes, we lived.
We lived, yes, don’t say it was a dream.
June 3, 2008
cripplingly beautiful, lyrically seductive and heart breaking. i think one needs a day to recuperate from this collection. from "Natalia": "Her shoulder: an ode to an evening, such ambitions [...]//we will open a small sweets shop--except for her lovers and my neighbors (who steal milk chocolate by handfuls) we will have no customers. In an empty store, dancing among stands with sugared walnuts, dried carnations, boxes upon boxes of mints and cherries dipped in honey, we will whisper to each other our truest stories.// The back of her knee: a blessed territory. I keep my wishes there." read this eating some sort of decadence: perhaps a hunter's stew, or something heartily legumey with potatoes, if you have a sweet tooth, then chocolate... a box of 'em, probably cream filled or turtles, something gooey.
March 27, 2011
Love this book.
'..Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "What year is it?"
I can dance in my sleep and laugh
in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,
I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine...'
from "Author's Prayer"
'..Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "What year is it?"
I can dance in my sleep and laugh
in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,
I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine...'
from "Author's Prayer"
June 26, 2020
Once or twice in his life, a man
is peeled like apples.
What’s left is a voice
that splits his being
down to the center.
We see: obscenity, fright, mud
but there is joy of shape, there is always
more than one silence.
Musica Humana
__
You, in the middle of an unwritten sentence, stop,
exile to a place further than silence.
Elegy for Joseph Brodsky
is peeled like apples.
What’s left is a voice
that splits his being
down to the center.
We see: obscenity, fright, mud
but there is joy of shape, there is always
more than one silence.
Musica Humana
__
You, in the middle of an unwritten sentence, stop,
exile to a place further than silence.
Elegy for Joseph Brodsky
March 13, 2008
It is bold to write elegies to great masters of your native language who died four decades before your birth in tragic circumstances; yet, Ilya Kaminsky seems comfortable using his adopted language (English) to attach himself to the writers in whose lineage he wishes to belong. He stakes a claim over personal stories in the lives of Osip and Nadezhda Mandelstam, Joseph Brodsky, Isaac Babel and Marina Tsvetaeva--three of whom were ground out of existence by the Soviet government between 1938 and 1941. He also permits into this constellation, Paul Celan, whose Jewishness and experience of suffering presumably outweigh the fact that he wrote his poetry in German. Kaminsky and his family fled the former Soviet Union for the United States, where they were granted asylum. I don’t know more about his life than that; but the authors mentioned above endured horrendous circumstances.
At several points in this volume, Kaminsky makes clear that he has no affiliation (“I was born in the city named after Odysseus/ and I praise no nation—” “The sky my medicine, the sky my country”); perhaps worried that his readers might not understand that this constitutes a rejection of the national identity of his asylum-givers, he writes, “In plain speech, for the sweetness/ between the lines is no longer important, what you call immigration I call suicide.” We also know, from the first line of the collection that he aspires to “speak for the dead”—whether this is easier or more difficult for someone who feels that he has killed his identity, I do not know. Occasionally, throughout the volume, there are moments where Kaminsky shows (appropriate) modesty about his poetic ambitions. For example, to Joseph Brodsky, he writes, “You would be ashamed of these wooden lines,/ how I don’t imagine your death/ but it is here, setting my hands on fire.”
In any case, an ambitious, deep-feeling young poet is constructing, for himself and for his ancestors, a tribute and a bridge. From what I have read, he is not their equal; but he is talented and I will read him again. In his poems grapefruit, small change, levity and intimacy oppose the Furies of fascism, search warrants, surveillance and tanks. Prose poems, a glossary and a recipe are integrated sensibly with more lyric verse and a small palette of objects recur throughout all five of the longer, segmented poems: pigeons, wind, tomatoes, coins, ill-fated ships, joints of the human body, lemons, the word “syllables”, biblical references and hands. It works to have these humble nodes, connecting one poem to the next, binding the thoughtful and sometimes touching love poems to his wife with the poems that imagine dead voices from another era in their moments of grief or celebration. There is something logical about selecting objects, forces, and traditions that have not changed and using them as a shared context for diverse human subjects.
But, I have not spoken highly enough about the quality of his poetry when he gets things right: he sometimes manages a rapid movement over and through several connected people in a way that is both affectionate and wise. For instance,
“my mother danced, she filled the past/ with peaches, casseroles. At this, my doctor laughed, his granddaughter/ touched my eyelid—I kissed/ / the back of her knee.”
“On my brother’s head: not a single/ gray hair, he is singing to his twelve-month-old son. / / And my father is singing/ to his six-year-old silence.”
At other times, Kaminsky conjures a very real and sympathetic persona that struggles to connect and remain connected:
“I bend clumsily at the knees/ and I quarrel no more,/ all I want is a human window/ / in a house whose roof is my life.”
“He is traveling across her kitchen, touching furniture,/ a small propeller in his head / / turning as he speaks.”
“Memory,/ I whisper, stay awake.”
A book of poetry is worth reading, from my point of view, if it offers up just a few pages of excerpts this singular and unpretentious. Kaminsky achieves this and he does so without ever being annoying—even while embarked on what I obviously think is a rather grand mission.
At several points in this volume, Kaminsky makes clear that he has no affiliation (“I was born in the city named after Odysseus/ and I praise no nation—” “The sky my medicine, the sky my country”); perhaps worried that his readers might not understand that this constitutes a rejection of the national identity of his asylum-givers, he writes, “In plain speech, for the sweetness/ between the lines is no longer important, what you call immigration I call suicide.” We also know, from the first line of the collection that he aspires to “speak for the dead”—whether this is easier or more difficult for someone who feels that he has killed his identity, I do not know. Occasionally, throughout the volume, there are moments where Kaminsky shows (appropriate) modesty about his poetic ambitions. For example, to Joseph Brodsky, he writes, “You would be ashamed of these wooden lines,/ how I don’t imagine your death/ but it is here, setting my hands on fire.”
In any case, an ambitious, deep-feeling young poet is constructing, for himself and for his ancestors, a tribute and a bridge. From what I have read, he is not their equal; but he is talented and I will read him again. In his poems grapefruit, small change, levity and intimacy oppose the Furies of fascism, search warrants, surveillance and tanks. Prose poems, a glossary and a recipe are integrated sensibly with more lyric verse and a small palette of objects recur throughout all five of the longer, segmented poems: pigeons, wind, tomatoes, coins, ill-fated ships, joints of the human body, lemons, the word “syllables”, biblical references and hands. It works to have these humble nodes, connecting one poem to the next, binding the thoughtful and sometimes touching love poems to his wife with the poems that imagine dead voices from another era in their moments of grief or celebration. There is something logical about selecting objects, forces, and traditions that have not changed and using them as a shared context for diverse human subjects.
But, I have not spoken highly enough about the quality of his poetry when he gets things right: he sometimes manages a rapid movement over and through several connected people in a way that is both affectionate and wise. For instance,
“my mother danced, she filled the past/ with peaches, casseroles. At this, my doctor laughed, his granddaughter/ touched my eyelid—I kissed/ / the back of her knee.”
“On my brother’s head: not a single/ gray hair, he is singing to his twelve-month-old son. / / And my father is singing/ to his six-year-old silence.”
At other times, Kaminsky conjures a very real and sympathetic persona that struggles to connect and remain connected:
“I bend clumsily at the knees/ and I quarrel no more,/ all I want is a human window/ / in a house whose roof is my life.”
“He is traveling across her kitchen, touching furniture,/ a small propeller in his head / / turning as he speaks.”
“Memory,/ I whisper, stay awake.”
A book of poetry is worth reading, from my point of view, if it offers up just a few pages of excerpts this singular and unpretentious. Kaminsky achieves this and he does so without ever being annoying—even while embarked on what I obviously think is a rather grand mission.
July 17, 2016
Beautiful language, there's no doubt about that. However, what I look for in poetry is a personal connection, and I couldn't find it in this. I also had very high expectations as this is so highly acclaimed, but in the end, it was just not my cup of tea.
April 22, 2008
Ilya Kaminsky is the new Milosz; his poems are those rare gems that glimmer off the page as if you're holding them in your hands - they LIVE. Ilya lost his hearing as a child, so the poems sing with a very interior-seeming language, a new beat that you start to get used to as you move through the book. (And it's a book with dancing in the title...hmmmm). Some of the poems will leave you breathless, and the narrative lines in this book evoke a world that few of us really see clearly or even know anything about. How much do I know about Odessa? Not much, but I feel like I've been to that place -- at least lyrically -- in this book. Special shout out to Ilya for the amazing love poems, which must be the most difficult poems to write. Plus, points to Ilya for being a fabulous guy, a wise and warm (but honest!) teacher,a big personality and a truly poetic (think theatrical)reader of his own work.
October 19, 2011
Magical. I needed to read this book today, since I was just replying to a friend who wrote a poem about synesthesia. Some of my favorite moments:
When I lost my hearing, I began to see voices.
He ran ofter a train with tomatoes in his coat
We lived north of the future, days opened
letters with a child's signature, a raspberry, a page of sky.
August! the light in the tress, full of fury. August
filling hands with language that tastes like smoke.
I've made mistakes, yes: in bed
I compared government
to my girlfriend.
Nadezhda, her Yes and No are difficult
to tell apart.
October: grapes hung like the fists of a girl
gassed in her prayer.
She unfastened two buttons of his trousers--
to learn two languages:/
one for ankles, and one for remembering.
you have for sisters wild carnations,
nipples of lilacs, splinters and chickens.
"soul = pain + everything else."
all I want is a human window/
in a house whose roof is my life.
When I lost my hearing, I began to see voices.
He ran ofter a train with tomatoes in his coat
We lived north of the future, days opened
letters with a child's signature, a raspberry, a page of sky.
August! the light in the tress, full of fury. August
filling hands with language that tastes like smoke.
I've made mistakes, yes: in bed
I compared government
to my girlfriend.
Nadezhda, her Yes and No are difficult
to tell apart.
October: grapes hung like the fists of a girl
gassed in her prayer.
She unfastened two buttons of his trousers--
to learn two languages:/
one for ankles, and one for remembering.
you have for sisters wild carnations,
nipples of lilacs, splinters and chickens.
"soul = pain + everything else."
all I want is a human window/
in a house whose roof is my life.
April 22, 2022
What a wonderful collection! Lyrical but also gut-punching. It took me some time to get through the pain to see the beauty.
Lovely poems both reminiscent of and homage to such writers as Osip Mandlestam, Joseph Brodsky, Isaac Babel.
As soon as I finished, I started again. It's the kind of poetry I want to memorize.
Lovely poems both reminiscent of and homage to such writers as Osip Mandlestam, Joseph Brodsky, Isaac Babel.
As soon as I finished, I started again. It's the kind of poetry I want to memorize.
December 11, 2021
This is the best book of poetry by an emerging poet that I have read in ten years. I met this young writer at Breadloaf and he blew my mind. He is the real deal. I felt like someone set my head on fire and I began to write again.
January 29, 2011
Ilya Kaminsky's "Dancing in Odessa" is one of the most impressive books of poems of the past decade. It's brilliant imagination seizes you by the arm and demands that you accompany it. And what strange and delightful places it takes you. Other salient qualities of these poems are their gentle humor, earthy desire, matter-of-fact surrealism, telling and succinct language. Tragedy lies behind some of them, particularly "Musica Humana," Kaminsky's elegy for the poet Osip Mandelstam, who was snuffed out in Stalin's Gulag. Kaminsky's willingness to converse directly with several of the great Russian 20th Century poets--most of whom died before he was born--adds another level of delight and meta-poetic significance to some of the poems. I can't recommend this book enough. You're not likely to read a more affecting book of poems this year.
November 12, 2018
"DiO" is the contemporary litmus test for poets... aka, if you're not trying to write poems this good, what are you trying to do?
That may sound like a zealous remark, but Kaminsky's managed to cultivate striking poems, wrought with stirring images, narrative intensity, and just damn well put together stanzas and line breaks...
...and made it look easy to boot.
It's rare to pick up a book of poems that learns you this good on every page, and I probably will keep "DiO" in my "currently reading" bookshelf until Joel decides he wants his copy back (may it not happen soon, oh Lahd).
That may sound like a zealous remark, but Kaminsky's managed to cultivate striking poems, wrought with stirring images, narrative intensity, and just damn well put together stanzas and line breaks...
...and made it look easy to boot.
It's rare to pick up a book of poems that learns you this good on every page, and I probably will keep "DiO" in my "currently reading" bookshelf until Joel decides he wants his copy back (may it not happen soon, oh Lahd).
August 27, 2008
BY FAR THE BEST POET I HAVE DESCOVERED AND ACTUALLY LIKED!!! I COMPLETELY AND UTTERLY RELATE TO HIS WRITING, AND YET AM PERPLEXED BY A LARGE PORTION OF IT. IT STAYS JUST OUT OF REACH FOR ONE TO GRASP ENTIRELY THUS SUSTAINING ITS GRANDUER AND MAJESTY! THIS IS THE PERSON I LOOK UP TO, IF I COULD WRITE JUST A LITTLE OF THE KIND OF WRITTING HE ACCOMPLISHES I WOULD BE SET!!! IMAGINE MEETING YOUR FAVORITE CELEBRITY TO WHERE YOU WOULDN'T BE ABLE TO TALK, OR AT LEAST TALK COHERENTLY WHEN YOU CAME FACE TO FACE WITH HIM OR HER. KIND OF LIKE THAT!
June 25, 2008
rereading for the umpteenth time... an amazing book.
July 15, 2008
holy god. read this book.
January 2, 2022
Nascut a la ciutat d'Odessa de l'antiga URSS (ara ciutat ucraïanesa), el poeta i la seva família van ser otorgats asil polític als Estats Units l'any 1993, quan Kaminsky tenia 16 anys, degut al creixent antisemitisme. Un any després ja va començar a escriure tota la seva poesia en anglès.
Aquest poemari és un homenatge (?), un retorn, a la cultura i la vida deixades enrere a corre-cuita, des de la perspectiva que dóna l'espai temporal i físic.
Des de records personals a reflexions sobre artistes com Brodsky, Celan, Tsvetàieva, o Mandelstam, aquesta primera obra de Kaminsky és un gustasso lingüístic i conceptual. Queda pendent rellegir Deaf Republic.
Aquest poemari és un homenatge (?), un retorn, a la cultura i la vida deixades enrere a corre-cuita, des de la perspectiva que dóna l'espai temporal i físic.
Des de records personals a reflexions sobre artistes com Brodsky, Celan, Tsvetàieva, o Mandelstam, aquesta primera obra de Kaminsky és un gustasso lingüístic i conceptual. Queda pendent rellegir Deaf Republic.
December 7, 2008
Every word just jumps off the page!
January 21, 2024
muhteşemdi.
March 2, 2015
From "Musica Humana":
"I will tell you a story," Ovid would say. I would shake my head, no thank you. "Ah, a romantic boy with a barefoot heart! Never have you been buried in the earth or savored the delicious meat of sacrifice! Listen to a story--
When in his fifties, my uncle got sick, his two brothers went around the street with a "list of days." They asked the neighbors to give him a day of their own lives and to sign their names next to it. when they asked Natalia, a young girl next door who was secretly in love with him, she wrote: "I am giving you all my remaining life," and signed. Even his brothers tried to talk her out of it. They argued, voiced reasons: she would not listen. "All my remaining life," she said. "That is my wish."
The next morning, my uncle was up with a smile on his face while the girl's body was found at midday breathless in her own sweaty bed. The winter passed and then another winter. One by one the man's friends began to die, he buried his own brothers. He abhorred his existence. Every Sunday we saw him at the market, trying the fruits with his thumb, buying a peach or a pear, muttering to himself. He only spoke to children. One night, he said, it seemed as if he heard a distant music. Amazed, he understood--it was the day of Natalia's wedding, a choir in which she did not have a chance to sing. A year later, reading the Talmud, he stopped in the middle of a page, hearing a child's cry. Lord, he whispered, her baby is due today--a happiness she will never know. Her life, hour after hour, steamed before him. He heard music once more, wondering if it was her second marriage or her own daughter's early wedding. How many times he woke at night asking God to grant him death; but he lived. We saw him, each Sunday morning, at the market, buying fruit, counting the singles carefully. Once, in July, getting coins from his pocket to pay for a plum he began, violently, to rub his chest. He sat down on the pavement, whispering that he suddenly heard someone's sickening scream. We understood.
"I will tell you a story," Ovid would say. I would shake my head, no thank you. "Ah, a romantic boy with a barefoot heart! Never have you been buried in the earth or savored the delicious meat of sacrifice! Listen to a story--
When in his fifties, my uncle got sick, his two brothers went around the street with a "list of days." They asked the neighbors to give him a day of their own lives and to sign their names next to it. when they asked Natalia, a young girl next door who was secretly in love with him, she wrote: "I am giving you all my remaining life," and signed. Even his brothers tried to talk her out of it. They argued, voiced reasons: she would not listen. "All my remaining life," she said. "That is my wish."
The next morning, my uncle was up with a smile on his face while the girl's body was found at midday breathless in her own sweaty bed. The winter passed and then another winter. One by one the man's friends began to die, he buried his own brothers. He abhorred his existence. Every Sunday we saw him at the market, trying the fruits with his thumb, buying a peach or a pear, muttering to himself. He only spoke to children. One night, he said, it seemed as if he heard a distant music. Amazed, he understood--it was the day of Natalia's wedding, a choir in which she did not have a chance to sing. A year later, reading the Talmud, he stopped in the middle of a page, hearing a child's cry. Lord, he whispered, her baby is due today--a happiness she will never know. Her life, hour after hour, steamed before him. He heard music once more, wondering if it was her second marriage or her own daughter's early wedding. How many times he woke at night asking God to grant him death; but he lived. We saw him, each Sunday morning, at the market, buying fruit, counting the singles carefully. Once, in July, getting coins from his pocket to pay for a plum he began, violently, to rub his chest. He sat down on the pavement, whispering that he suddenly heard someone's sickening scream. We understood.
June 20, 2007
Completely unique, this Ukrainian-born Russian poet (writing in English, his second language) manages to insert recipes and historical narratives into his lyric poetry seamlesslessly. Also, one of the only poets I know who can get away with using exclamation points. This is a book to uplift and delight. I love it!
March 6, 2009
This is probably one of the most beautiful books of poetry I ever read. Really amazing.
October 28, 2017
I have never read anything like this before. I am in awe.
February 10, 2022
Dar vienas svaigus Ilya Kaminsky eilėraščių rinkinys. Netyčia aptiktas Romoje ir pulsuote pulsuojantis magiškais pasakojimais, kuriame, viena vertus, profesionaliai trinamos ribos tarp to, kas tikra ir išgalvota, ir vis dėlto tai daroma taip įtikinamai, kad nelabai ir yra pagrindo tos kuriamos tikrovės „tikrumu“ suabejoti. Lobis!
March 8, 2022
I KNEW I was going to love Ilya Kaminsky's poetry but I wasn't ready for how beautifully eviscerating it would end up being. Gorgeous.
We lived, yes, don't say it was a dream.
We lived, yes, don't say it was a dream.
December 28, 2022
Marina Tsvetaeva
In each line’s strange syllable: she awakes
as a gull, torn
between heaven and earth.
I accept her, stand with her, face to face.
—in this dream: she wears her dress
like a sail, runs behind me, stopping
when I stop. She laughs
as a child speaking to herself:
“soul = pain + everything else.”
I bend clumsily at the knees
and I quarrel no more,
all I want is a human window
in a house whose roof is my life.
In each line’s strange syllable: she awakes
as a gull, torn
between heaven and earth.
I accept her, stand with her, face to face.
—in this dream: she wears her dress
like a sail, runs behind me, stopping
when I stop. She laughs
as a child speaking to herself:
“soul = pain + everything else.”
I bend clumsily at the knees
and I quarrel no more,
all I want is a human window
in a house whose roof is my life.
July 4, 2023
Oeh, see läks korraga kergelt ja raskelt. Suviti kaubanduskskusehääled kuidagi eriti painavad mind. Kui palju mingit kämu! Igatahes "Kurtide vabariik" on küpsem ja päevakajalisem (kuigi "Odessa tantsud" ilusam), nii et kui lugeda ainult üht, siis soovitan kurte. Kui kaht, siis mõlemat. See siin on küll veidi meesluule ja selline nagu kajakas tuules, et kord lendab siia- kord sinnapoole. Või siis ma ei leidnud lihtsalt kogu selgroogu üles.
June 27, 2012
These poems have an authority I covet. They feel owned and earned, and the speaker is such a wise migrant of the world that I don't even balk when he travels back into imaginary interactions with several great, dead Russian poets.
It's brief but dense, and I read it slowly, over a number of days.
Individual lines/moments are stunning: even the hundredth use of the word "dancing".
It's brief but dense, and I read it slowly, over a number of days.
Individual lines/moments are stunning: even the hundredth use of the word "dancing".
March 20, 2022
I have only just finished this book and already I feel changed by it, by the way it balances grief and longing and sensuality and homage. It's not a juggler but a tightrope walker—or, as the title suggests, a dancer, elegant beyond comprehension, swift and searing. I want to read a million more books and write a million more love poems after finishing this.
December 30, 2008
if i was a senator, i would include an ear-mark in the bail-out for one billion dollars for this book to be handed to every american. his reading @ lunchpoems felt 'deeply human' and 'out-of-body' at once.
August 14, 2007
Dude, write another book!
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