David Lehman’s scintillating
introduction to Monday night’s reading of poetry by three young Russians and
three young Americans at the Mid-Manhattan Branch of the New York Public
Library brought Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Gogol, Babel, Akhmatova, Blok,
Pasternak, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, Nabokov, and Brodsky into the room, a
perfect stage for the next ninety minutes of verse in two languages.
In an evening presented by the
Debut Prize and Causa Artium,
Dina Gatina, Alla Gorbunova, and Lev Oborin, winners of the prestigious Russian
literary honor, read and conversed with three award-winning American poets —
Brooklyn’s Poet Laureate Tina Chang, the delightfully imaginative Heather
Christle, and the inimitable Matthew Yeager. The overflow crowd thrilled to the
discovery of new voices, rhythms, and images amid glimmers of recognition and
recollections of the familiar. John William Narins’s translations and David
Lehman’s insightful and witty moderation of the conversation kept the evening’s
focus on each poet’s individual talents as well as the cross-connections of
poetic heritage.
Following are some excerpts of the
poems read:
Dina Gatina, born in the Russian provinces in 1981, an illustrator
and poet:
every day millions of
people die for our sins
so what
you’re repeating
yourself
so what, so what
they die
“you’re repeating yourself”
“every day”
repeat after me
and whatever
from
“Untitled,” translated by Ainsley Morse and Bela Shayevich
Tina Chang, born in 1969 in Oklahoma, poet and teacher of poetry at
Sarah Lawrence:
It wasn’t holy so let us not praise gods.
Let us not look to them for bread,
nor the cup that changed water to wine.
Let us look to the bend of the road
that reaches. A silver blur across
the skyline, woman standing on a farm.
In her grasp, the shine that is seed,
That is beginning.
from “The Idea of Revelation”
Alla Gorbunova, born
in 1985 on Vasilievsky Island in St. Petersburg, poet, translator, reviewer,
journalist and teacher of philosophy:
a monument to those who have fallen into oblivion
to the woodland villages
a temple to the profundity of the cranes;
teardrops in the hooflets of thaw-patches.
a monument to those who have fallen into oblivion
from “in the promise of catastrophe”
Heather Christle, born
in 1980 in New Hampshire, poet, teacher of poetry at Sarah Lawrence and web
editor for jubilat:
It’s no good trying to talk to a roof
A roof already knows everything
It will only turn away
Better to stand on it
and yell facts at the stars
as if you were a real rocket
I’m tired of my constant apologies
All the sorrows I’ve whispered to leaves
who do nothing who tremble
who will not be appeased
I will be a leaf myself
from
“Up Again With The Night”
Lev Oborin, born
in 1987 in Moscow, poet, critic, translator, and musician:
The crumb of the bread in a thick of ducks
is quite the black hole, no mistake
(except white, and it doesn’t act both near and far,
so it’s really a neutron star).
and inwards the birds are all sucked
towards the lump on the autumn lake
a rare and perfect day,
almost time to fly away,
from
“Untitled”
Matthew Yeagar,
graduated high school in 1998, a poet and filmmaker:
You’re Henry Hudson, and one hour ago, you were asleep,
You were in you bunk in your cabin on your back,
And the weird northern light through your porthole, etc.
Now you are watching your own ship sail away without you on it.
You’re Henry Hudson
And you are having a hard time believing so.
from
“poem [You’re Henry Hudson]”
As the organizers promised
beforehand, the evening of young, award-winning Russian and American poets was
full of variety, richness, confidence and vibrancy, and the program one of
connections, bringing to mind the ribs, cables, wires, and expanses of bridges,
the similes and swagger David Lehman captured in translation in “Brooklyn Bridge, after Vladimir Mayakovsky”
And finally I see –
here stood Mayakovsky,
composing
verse, syllable by syllable.
I look at you
as an Eskimo admires a
train.
I stick to you
as a tick to an ear.
Brooklyn Bridge,
You’re really something,
aren’t you?
Madge
McKeithen teaches writing at the New School, is at work on her second book, and
writes online at www.madgemckeithen.com