What We Live For, What We Die For Selected Poems Serhiy Zhadan, Virlana Tkacz, Wanda Phipps, Bob Holman
- Price: £12.99
- Add to Basket
Share this page:
- Series:
- The Margellos World Republic of Letters
- Format:
- Paperback
- Publication date:
- 11 Jun 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780300223361
- Imprint:
- Yale University Press
- Dimensions:
- 160 pages: 197 x 152 x 11mm
- Sales territories:
- World
Categories:
An introduction to an original poetic voice from eastern Ukraine with deep roots in the unique cultural landscape of post-Soviet devastation
“Everyone can find something, if they only look carefully,” reads one of the memorable lines from this first collection of poems in English by the world‑renowned Ukrainian author Serhiy Zhadan. These robust and accessible narrative poems feature gutsy portraits of life on wartorn and poverty-ravaged streets, where children tally the number of local deaths, where mothers live with low expectations, and where romance lives like a remote memory. In the tradition of Tom Waits, Charles Bukowski, and William S. Burroughs, Zhadan creates a new poetics of loss, a daily crusade of testimonial, a final witness of abandoned lives in a claustrophobic universe where “every year there’s less and less air.” Yet despite the grimness of these portraits, Zhadan’s poems are familiar and enchanting, lit by the magic of everyday detail, leaving readers with a sense of hope, knowing that the will of a people “will never let it be / like it was before.”
“Everyone can find something, if they only look carefully,” reads one of the memorable lines from this first collection of poems in English by the world‑renowned Ukrainian author Serhiy Zhadan. These robust and accessible narrative poems feature gutsy portraits of life on wartorn and poverty-ravaged streets, where children tally the number of local deaths, where mothers live with low expectations, and where romance lives like a remote memory. In the tradition of Tom Waits, Charles Bukowski, and William S. Burroughs, Zhadan creates a new poetics of loss, a daily crusade of testimonial, a final witness of abandoned lives in a claustrophobic universe where “every year there’s less and less air.” Yet despite the grimness of these portraits, Zhadan’s poems are familiar and enchanting, lit by the magic of everyday detail, leaving readers with a sense of hope, knowing that the will of a people “will never let it be / like it was before.”
Serhiy Zhadan was born in the Luhansk Region of Ukraine and educated in Kharkiv. His previous works include Mesopotamia, and his books have been translated into several languages. Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps are an award-winning translation team who have been translating Ukrainian poetry since 1989.
“A startling collection of verse”—Askold Melnyczuk, Times Literary Supplement
Selected as a 2020 PEN Translation Award Semi-Finalist, sponsored by PEN America Literary Awards
Shortlisted for the Walcott Prize, sponsored by Arrow Press
Received honorable mention for the Lois Roth Award, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America
Selected as a 2020 PEN Translation Award Semi-Finalist, sponsored by PEN America Literary Awards
Shortlisted for the Walcott Prize, sponsored by Arrow Press
Received honorable mention for the Lois Roth Award, sponsored by the Modern Language Association of America
-
Kindred Voices
Michael Pifer£35.00 -
The New World Written
Maria Baranda£25.00 -
Islamic Thought in Africa
Alhaj Yusuf Salih Ajura£65.00 -
Yale French Studies, Number 137/138
Thomas C. Connolly£50.00 -
The Aeneid
Vergil£12.99 -
The Craft of Poetry
Lucy Newlyn£14.99 -
A Little History of Poetry
John Carey£9.99 -
Heinrich Heine
George Prochnik£16.99 -
Take Arms Against a Sea of Troubles
Harold Bloom£25.00 -
For Now
Eileen Myles£12.99 -
A Little History of Poetry
John Carey£14.99 -
Joy
Christian Wiman£14.99 -
For My People
Margaret Walker£14.99 -
Radical Love
Omid Safi£14.99 -
The Poetry of Pop
Adam Bradley£16.99 -
Sounds
Wassily Kandinsky£18.99 -
The Year of Blue Water
Yanyi£14.99 -
The Year of Blue Water
Yanyi£30.00 -
Who Wants to Be a Jewish Writer?
Adam Kirsch£18.00
-
The New World Written
Maria Baranda£25.00 -
Warda
Sonallah Ibrahim£20.00 -
Words as Grain
Duo Duo£20.00 -
The Orphanage
Serhiy Zhadan£14.99 -
Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts into Tears
Laszlo F. Foldenyi£12.99 -
Mechanisms of Loss
Michel Fais£20.00 -
Invisible Ink
Patrick Modiano£16.00 -
That Light, All at Once
Jean-Paul de Dadelsen£25.00 -
Stories for the Years
Luigi Pirandello£20.00 -
The Third Walpurgis Night
Karl Kraus£25.00 -
I Live in the Slums
Can Xue£20.00 -
The Punishment
Tahar Ben Jelloun£18.00 -
The Book of Collateral Damage
Sinan Antoon£11.99 -
Dostoyevsky Reads Hegel in Siberia and Bursts into Tears
Laszlo F. Foldenyi£18.99 -
Sleep of Memory
Patrick Modiano£10.99 -
The Dregs of the Day
Mairtin O Cadhain£9.99 -
Until Stones Become Lighter Than Water
António Lobo Antunes£18.99 -
A Greek Ballad
Michalis Ganas£30.00 -
Family Record
Patrick Modiano£12.99 -
The Book of Collateral Damage
Sinan Antoon£16.99