Menu
Menu
Menu
there is no drama
1.
If you want to know a person, look at the landscape
rustling sheets of pencil portraits
without a face
beers knocked over at the exact moment
the voyeur turns into a stalker
getting lost in the streets of Strasbourg
a tracing diagram of heels kicking back
hiding in a store
wishing for a long-awaited find
frustration traveling
along the streetcar line
the elusive stillness of memories
freeze frame with the beggar girl
his interest in documentary
is motivated by art
that breaks with sexist templates
there is no drama
2.
it’s a very specific, very strong thought
an uncompromising judgment
the ability to disengage from everything
that constantly preoccupies
The novel copes with ontological dissonance
having matured
but not yet
until my voice rings out
unsteadiness is like worn-out machinery
of the Soviet era
like archival dust
sliding down the cliff
but there’s no drama
Translated by N. K.
Vitaly Lekhtsier is a poet, literary critic, co-editor of the literary and analytical portal “Circus Olympus+TV” (2011-2022), and social researcher. He is the author of seven books of poetry (the eighth one is forthcoming), and seven monographs published in Russia and Lithuania. Winner of the Andrei Bely Prize (2019). His poems have been translated into English, and his scholarly research has been translated into Spanish and Bulgarian. He works at the S.P. Korolev National Research University in Samara.
Launched in 2012, “Four Centuries” is an international electronic magazine of Russian poetry in translation.
Ilya Ehrenburg (1891–1967) was one of the most prolific Russian writers of the twentieth century. Babi Yar and Other Poems, translated by Anna Krushelnitskaya, is a representative selection of Ehrenburg’s poetry, available in English for the first time.
Young readers will love this delightful work of children’s verse by poet William Conelly, accompanied by Nadia Kossman’s imaginative, evocative illustrations.
A book of poems by Maria Galina, put together and completed exactly one day before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is Galina’s seventh book of poems. With translations by Anna Halberstadt and Ainsley Morse.
The first bilingual (Russian-English) collection of poems by Aleksandr Kabanov, one of Ukraine’s major poets, “Elements for God” includes poems that predicted – and now chronicle – Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
A book of poems by Yulia Fridman.
“I have been reading Yulia Fridman’s poems for a long time and have admired them for a long time.” (Vladimir Bogomyakov, poet)
