Reviews - Dancing in Odessa

74 reviews for:

Dancing in Odessa

Ilya Kaminsky

4.15 AVERAGE

queertist's review against another edition

4.5

dark emotional hopeful reflective sad fast-paced

brittanymishra's review against another edition

5.0

Such unique language and syntax in this collection. I've read Deaf Republic before I read this older collection and Ilya is a master here, and he is a master in Deaf Republic. His language around contradiction and that the very city that is not a city, Odessa, is so many things all at once and is truly nothing, he plays with this idea in all of these poems, and each attempt build a whole new language of diaspora and displacement and sadness.

A beautiful and heart breaking collection.

mariannemersereau's review against another edition

3.0

My favorite poem in this collection is the first one, "Author's Prayer" and my favorite line is "Even sleep is a prayer, Lord," I especially like how the author, who immigrated to the US from Ukraine, includes prose poems to complement his other pieces.

sunstreamer's review against another edition

3.0

"You, in the middle of an unwritten sentence, stop,
exile to a place further than silence."

blind read - not familiar with this author or his story, so there's a lot of the writing that i think would have been more impactful if i had known the context for it.
(not that poetry inherently needs context, but without being able to connect the words to my own life - i can only appreciate his words as a reflection of his own life, which i don't know.)

note to self for reading similar poetry anthologies in the future...