About the Author:
Wayne Pernu
Portland, OR, US
Wayne Pernu is an American poet who grew up in Minnesota and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
A millisecond too close in,
a century too far out,
water the plague of uncertainty
and no dry land to assuage the doubt.
A dizzying look at the world
through the eyes of a disowned daughter;
ocean declared the province of death
and everywhere water, water.
Any direction the wind goes
provides for them who have no route
circling wave-ripples, wave-ripples,
wave-ripples, in aimless pursuit.
The sun stuns, the heat strokes,
and no one else can see
but they who die in mid-ocean
how imperishable water can be.
Вода
Недолет на миллисекунду,
перелет на тысячу лет,
вода — чума переменчивости,
и без суши опоры нет.
Мир глазами брошенной дочери:
головокружение, тошнота,
океан объявлен волостью смерти,
и повсюду — вода, вода.
Куда бы ветер ни дунул,
если сбился с пути человек, —
лишь круги на воде, круги на воде,
бесконечный, бесцельный бег.
Солнце давит, жара дурманит,
и не знает никто, никогда,
кроме гибнущих в океане,
как нетленна бывает вода.
Russian translation by Dmitry Manin
Wayne Pernu is an American poet who grew up in Minnesota and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
Dmitri Manin is a physicist, programmer, and translator of poetry. His translations from English and French into Russian have appeared in several book collections. His latest work is a complete translation of Ted Hughes’ “Crow” (Jaromír Hladík Press, 2020) and Allen Ginsberg’s “The Howl, Kaddish and Other Poems” (Podpisnie Izdaniya, 2021). Dmitri’s Russian-to-English translations have been published in journals (Cardinal Points, Delos, The Café Review, Metamorphoses, etc) and in Maria Stepanova’s “The Voice Over” (CUP, 2021). In 2017, his translation of Stepanova’s poem won the Compass Award competition. “Columns,” his new book of translations of Nikolai Zabolotsky’s poems, was published by Arc Publications in 2023 (https://eastwestliteraryforum.com/books/nikolai-zabolotsky-columns-poems).
“A book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.” (Kafka)
A new collection of poems by Andrey Gritsman. In English.
The new poetry collection from Wayne Pernu, one of the finest poets writing in English today. This is one of those rare collections that calls to mind the great masters—Donne, Keats, Yeats.
Comedy and tragedy collide in stories of family life in Soviet Russia and the complexities of the immigrant experience
Boris Khersonsky and Ludmila Khersonsky write poetry that speaks to the crisis of our time, when refugees run from bombardments, and nonstop propaganda flows from TV. The setting is Ukraine at the start of the twenty-first century, but it is eerily recognizable anywhere.