Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine

Ukrainian Studies

by Oksana Maksymchuk (Editor), Max Rosochinsky (Editor), Ilya Kaminsky (Introduction)

The armed conflict in the east of Ukraine brought about an emergence of a distinctive trend in contemporary Ukrainian poetry: the poetry of war. Directly and indirectly, the poems collected in this volume engage with the events and experiences of war, reflecting on the themes of alienation, loss, dislocation, and disability; as well as justice, heroism, courage, resilience, generosity, and forgiveness. In addressing these themes, the poems also raise questions about art, politics, citizenship, and moral responsibility. The anthology brings together some of the most compelling poetic voices from different regions of Ukraine. Young and old, female and male, somber and ironic, tragic and playful, filled with extraordinary terror and ordinary human delights, the voices recreate the human sounds of war in its tragic complexity.

Genres: Poetry, Ukraine, Anthologies, War, Nonfiction

242 pages, Hardcover

First published December 1, 2017

About the author

Oksana Maksymchuk is a Ukrainian-American poet, scholar, & literary translator. Her debut English-language poetry collection Still City is the 2024 Pitt Poetry Series selection, published by University of Pittsburgh Press (US) and Carcanet Press (UK).

Oksana is a co-recipient of a National Endowments for the Arts Translation Fellowship, Scaglione Prize for Literary Translation from the Modern Language Association of America, Peterson Translated Book Award, and American Association for Ukrainian Studies Translation Prize. Her work has been featured on BBC Radio 3, CBC Radio, The Times, The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and TEDx.

Connect with her on X and Instagram @ok_maksymchuk or on her website www.oksanamaksymchuk.com

Oksana holds a PhD in philosophy from Northwestern University. Born and raised in Lviv, Ukraine, she has also lived in Chicago, Philadelphia, Budapest, Berlin, Warsaw, and Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Reviews

[s.penkevich [hiatus-will return-miss you all] · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘Is poetry possible / At the moment history stirs?’ asks Ukrainian poet Anastasia Afanasieva in the anthology Words for War: New Poems From Ukraine. Compiled and translated into English from Ukrainian poets writing in response to the Crimean War and fighting in Donbas, editors Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky present hard hitting poetry from 16 Ukrainian poets bearing witness to the horrible conflict that resonate just as strongly today as when they were written. In the introduction,poet Ilya Kaminsky (author of Deaf Republic) writes ‘the language of poetry may or may not change us, but it shows the changes within us,’ and the poems selected here are intended to portray the effects of war on individual as well as national levels. ‘Each person,’ writes Halyna Kruk, ‘carries their own war,’ and this necessary and important anthology does an excellent job of curating poems that drive this point into your heart.

Headphones
-Serhiy Zhadan

Sasha, quiet alcoholic, esoteric, poet,
spent the whole summer in the city.
Surprised when the shelling started,
he turned on the news, then quit watching.
He roams the city, never removing his headphones,
listening to dinosaurs,
he runs into burnt out cars,
and dismembered bodies.

All of history,
the world where we once lived,
has left us the words and music of a few geniuses
who tried, and failed, to warn us,
tries to explain something or other,
but explained nothing, saved no one.
In graveyards,
their genius rib cages
sprout flowers and grass.
Nothing else will he left—
just the music, just the words, just a voice
forcing us to love.

You never have to turn this music off.
Listen to outer space, your eyes shut tight
Think about whales in the night ocean.
There’s nothing else to hear.
Nothing else to see.
Nothing else to feel.
Except the smell, of course.
Except the smell of corpses.

I was apprehensive in how to review this because lately it seems all anyone associates with Ukraine is war and it should be understood that Ukraine, a country now since 1991, has a rich culture and heritage that I would recommend learning about and appreciating beyond all the political struggles and strife. National identity is a complex idea, as is any society made up of individuals, and governments and the people under them are two different things, but for the purpose of this review and anthology the theme all these works orbit around is that of conflict and ‘an interpretive response to war.’ As the editors write in the preface ‘these poems are traces of what had happened, as well as evidence that it did really happen. They are a form of testimony.’ To aid in the understanding of the events, there is a glossary of terms, geographical locations and extensive notes to provide context to readers of political and social issues, cultural references and historical events. Much can be learned here, and this is a good eyewitness testimony from regular civilians reacting emotionally and artistically to the horrors they faced. This is a difficult collection at times as many of the poems deal with very visceral images of violence, suffering and death.

How I Killed
-Lyuba Yakimchuk

I remain connected to my family over the phone
with all of my family connections wiretapped
they are curious: whom do I love more, mom or dad?
what makes my grandma cry out into the receiver?
intrigued as ever by my sister’s war-fueled drama with her boyfriend
who used to be my boyfriend

all of my phone connections are blood relations
my blood is wiretapped
they must know what percentage is Ukrainian
Polish, Russian, and if there’s any Gypsy
they must know how much of it I gave, and to whom
they must know whether that’s my blood sugar dropping
or the roof collapsing over me
and whether it’s possible to build borders out of membranes

hundreds of graves have been dug between me and my mother
and I don't know how to leap over them
hundreds of mortar shells fly between me and my father
and I can't see them as birds
the metal doors of a basement, secured with a shovel
separate me from my sister
a screen of prayers hangs between me and my grandmother
thin silky walls muting out the noise, I hear nothing

it's so simple to stay connected over the phone
to add minutes to my calling cards, restless nights, Xanax
it must feel so intoxicating
to listen to someone else's blood throbbing in your earphones
as my blood clots into a bullet:
BANG!
!

Ilya Kaminsky asks us ‘what happens to language in wartime?’ This is a pertinent question when frequent conflicts and acts of violence occur upon Ukraine from Russian soldiers over ‘the language issue’, with Kaminsky explaining ‘protection of the Russian language was continually cited as the sole reason for the annexation and hostilities’ in a country where both Ukrainian and Russian are spoken and the two, he tells us, generally coexist peacefully (Kaminsky has an excellent opinion piece in the NY Times this week on poems in crisis and the current conflict). He tells a story of a Russian language poet and professor who refused to lecture in Russian as an act of solidarity with occupied Ukraine. He prefaces this collection asking us to consider these questions:

’What does it mean for a poet to refuse to speak his own language? Is language a place you can leave? Is language a wall you can cross? What is on the other side of that wall. Every poet refuses the onslaught of language. The refusal manifests itself in silence illuminated by the meanings of poetic lexis—the meanings not of what the word says, but of what it withholds. As Maurice Blanchot wrote, “To write is to be absolutely distrustful of writing, while entrusting oneself to it entirely.”’

This attention to language is perfectly in the wheelhouse of poets and the effects of war on the body, the nation and its people are expertly addressed through language and on language here. We have Anastasia Afanasieva writing poems in a collective “we” to demonstrate the collective suffering of occupation, or Kateryna Kalytko’s personification of war as a physical body, a bullet as an eyeball stuck in a neck for instance. Lyuba Yakimchuk, who writes extensively on this topic saying ‘language is as beautiful as this world. So when someone destroys your world, language reflects that,’ in a recent opinion piece on the current conflict, demonstrates the destruction and fracturing of war through a fracturing of language itself in the aptly titled poem Decompostion:
‘don’t talk to me about Luhansk,
It’s long since turn into hansk
Lu had been razed to the ground///

There’s no poetry about war
Just decomposition
Only letters remain
And they all make a single sound - rrr…

This is a very powerful collection, one that shines a light on the horrors of war and occupation, something we are once seeing happen this very moment in Ukraine. ‘[E]ach generation must fight its own war,’ writes Vasyl Makhno, ‘each in that generation bears his own guilt,’ and the current generation is facing this right this very moment. I enjoyed that the editors made note they specifically wanted to ‘pay special attention to poems describing women’s experiences of war’ and that the poems reflect a wide variety of proximity and engagement with conflict. ‘It touches everyone,’ Borys Humenyuk says, ‘the dead, the living, and those not yet born.’ There are some fantastic poets and translators in here and I am now a huge fan of Lyuba Yakimchuk and would also recommend her collection Apricots of Donbass. This is a deeply moving and important anthology of poems, and I would certainly recommend it not just in light of current circumstances but at any time.

5/5

Poets included in the anthology: Anastasia Afanasieva, Vasyl Holoborodko, Borys Humenyuk, Yuri Izdryk, Aleksandr Kabanov, Kateryna Kalytko, Lyudmyla Khersonska, Boris Khersonsky, Marianna Kiyanovska, Halyna Kruk, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Vasyl Makno, Marjana Savka, Ostap Slyvynsky, Lyuba Yakimchuk and Serhiy Zhadan.

Translators from Ukrainian and Russian: Polina Barskova, Uilleam Blacker, Alex Cigale, Boris Dralyuk, Katie Farris, Tatiana Filimonova, Sibelan Forrester, Amelia M. Glaser, Bob Holman, Yuliya Ilchuk, Andrew Janco, Olena Jennings, Mary Kalyna, Ilya Kaminsky, Maria Khotimsky, Ostap Kin, Anatoly Kudryavitsky, Svetlana Lavochkina, Olga Livshin, Oksana Lushchevska, Oksana Lutsyshyna, Valzhyna Mort, Michael M. Naydan, Bohdan Pechenyak, Wanda Phipps, Anton Tenser, Virlana Tkacz, Kevin Vaughn, Katherine E. Young.

[Bogi Takács]

Whew. This anthology was highly compelling, I tried to stop reading and just couldn't, even though it's a book I wouldn't necessarily recommend reading in one sitting because of the heavy subject matter. Also it's 200+ pages of poetry, which might be a lot to take in all at once. Regardless, I couldn't tear myself away from it.

It gives you a broad overview of some of the most frequently translated Ukrainian poets and their war poetry (like Serhiy Zhadan, Boris Khersonsky, Lyuba Yakimchuk...) from the 2014-2017 period, and there are also poets who might be less familiar to English-language readers (e.g., Borys Humenyuk's work was entirely new to me). It was interesting to see some familiar-to-me poems in different translations, too - it think it is always great to see poems in multiple translations, it demonstrates the vivaciousness of the field.

There is also a large amount of accompanying material: essays, explanations about geographic locales and various cultural notes for individual poems. I feel that since the book came out, some of these details became MUCH better-known in the West, but of course the reason for that is more war coverage, so this is actually quite upsetting.

All in all, I think this is such a strong volume. Be prepared that it is a tough read, so go in with that in mind; but really, do it if you can.
_____
Source of the book: Lawrence Public Library, who ordered it on my request - thank you!

[Lisa Stice · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems by soldiers, civilians, and refugees are an uncomfortable read, but are a necessary read. The poems are beautifully crafted and translated.

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This printed book comes with a website (https://www.wordsforwar.com). The website displays the entire anthology with the advantage of including the original version of the poems, which the printed version does not. The printed version includes coloured pages displaying authors pictures in a remarkable layout design. It contains a useful glossary of specific terms, a Preface, an Introduction, an Afterword, short bios for each of the poets and for each one of the translators, as well as an onomastic index. As complete as an anthology can get, in my regard, the book provides a fair overview on recent Ukrainian poetry and the representation of war and its related emotions.


//Marianna Kiyankovska//

Речі змикаються. Дар відчувати вщерть. . .


Речі змикаються. Дар відчувати вщерть
Плід, що у горлі зріє – живий, як смерть.
Теплий на дотик, тихий на дні легень
Білий і чорний плоті анітелень
Спершу росте – як окунь, що впав у тло,
Потім густе, як око, що ріже скло,
Горло на нитці. Висутенів мовчок.
Речі зникаються. Горлом іде смичок.

__

Things swell closed. It’s delicious to feel how fully
The fruit ripens in your throat—such deadly vitality.
Warm to the touch, settled in the lungs’ depth,
A silhouette, disembodied, fleshless.
First, it grows—like the fish that got away,
Then, it thickens, an eye slicing through glass.
The throat’s on a line. The dusk thickens.
A cello bow draws the throat shut.


Translated from the Ukrainian by Oksana Maksymchuk,
Max Rosochinsky, and Kevin Vaughn

[Jan Kjellin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Aktualiteten i att läsa den här samlingen med flödet av nyheter om/från Rysslands invasionskrig i Ukraina påverkar självklart min läsning. Orden ackompanjeras av bilder som nyss passerat näthinnan och platserna som skildras är inte så okända eller anonyma som de varit annars.
Det här gör det svårt att ge ett nyanserat omdöme. Hur lägger jag belägringen av Marioupol åt sidan för att bedöma flödet och innerligheten i Boris Khersonskys dikter? Hur kan jag inte väva in de fruktansvärda övergrepp som hela tiden rapporteras om i sociala medier-flödet i läsningen av Borys Humenyuks skildring av blodröda måsar som tappar kroppsdelar / likt regn / som de stulit från slagfältet?

En del dikter - liksom enskilda strofer och rader - kommer jag att bära med mig. Annat, måste jag erkänna, föll mig inte i smaken, rent stilistiskt.

Men den sammantagna känslan av att befinna sig i ett krig som inte är ett krig - en väntan som är fylld av allt annat än just väntan - är kanske behållningen av denna diktsamling. och som Oksana Maksymchuk ovh Max Rosochinsky resonerar om i förordet kanske det poetiska perspektivet har förmågan att ge en mänskligare bild av tingens ordning i en tid och på en plats där tingen är i oordning?

[Kristoffer "Illern" Holmén · Rating 3 out of 5]

Det känns som att stil och känsla förloras i översättningen. Detta kan vara jag som läser för lite poesi av viss stil men intuitivt känns det som att översättningen riktigt får med sig poesin från ukrainska och ryska.

[Ben Rowe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent collection. I did like when I first encountered these poems in an MpT issue for there to be some biographical notes about the poets that are contained here only minimally at the end....but this is a great anthology of poems with a compelling theme powerfully told.

I had read a good chunk of these poems before from an MpT issue but it was really good to be able to explore some additional poems by some of the poets I had liked the most and also to discover some additional excellent poems.

Not every poem worked for me but many did.

[Sandy · Rating 5 out of 5]

This anthology of poems about the Ukrainian people's experiences of Russia's wars in Ukraine is riveting and heart-rending as well as rich in insight. This collection of poems in translation includes biographies of the poets and translators, a glossary of unique references, a geographical glossary, and a preface and afterword that speak the role of poetry in making real the experience of war from head to toe and inside and out.