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bookishcassie's review against another edition
4.0
http://booksandbowelmovements.wordpress.com/2011/08/15/a-poem-begins-as-a-lump-in-the-throat-a-sense-of-wrong-a-homesickness-a-lovesickness-%E2%80%94-robert-frost/
lindagreen's review against another edition
4.0
A wonderful collection of poetry from Russian poet Polina Barskova. An award winning poet she is unfortunately not exceedingly well known here in the States. Hopefully this diverse collection will open her to a wider audience. The collection itself highlights Ms. Barskova's diversity. From the dark, sensual decsriptions of landscape and love to the lighter, more direct poems dealing with everyday life and confrontations, the poems in this collection give an opening glance at the talents the author possesses. There is a poem for almost everyone here and even non-poetry types will find themselves drawn into an appreciation for her colorful turn of phrase and vivid portrayals of life. Excellent gift book for poetry lovers and a fabulous "loaner" for those testing their feet in modern poetry.
ARC Galley Proof
ARC Galley Proof
jeeleongkoh's review
4.0
I found a signed copy of Polina Barskova's The Zoo in Winter while browsing in St. Mark's Bookshop and bought it on the strength of the opening poems. She was born in St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, and moved to the States when she was 20. Regarded as a child prodigy, she published her first book of poems at age 15.
Barskova looks to the tremendous Russian literary tradition in which she moves and has her being. Her poems engage in a very lively manner with canonical writers such as Pushkin, Nabokov, Akhmatova and Brodsky. In the sequence "Pantheon," she riffs off the name of Pushkin by inventing poetic lookalikes such as Khlopushkin, Pliushkin and Peshkin. Her engagement with the tradition is at the same time deeply personal. On a visit to Prague, she writes movingly in "Motherhood and Childhood" about the death of Nabokov's mother in that city.
Besides the giants, she is also well-versed in a whole host of less-known Russian authors. The endnotes to this translation by Boris Dralyuk and David Stromberg usefully identify her references, but since I do not know the authors I read the poems feeling like an outsider peering into a rather grand house. Barskova loved Shakespeare from the beginning, as evinced in a series of poems written in the voices of various characters from Hamlet. Later, her residence in the United States has drawn her to American poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, to whom her poem "Brazilian Scenes" owes a creative debt.
Unlike Bishop, however, Barskova's imagery often strikes me as arbitrary rather than precise. Sometimes the juxtaposition of images produces a frisson, but at other times the clash falls into a heap. I don't understand, for instance, why "Verses of Winter Gone By. From Henry VI" begins with Hecate, continues with Dante, and ends with Antinous. The same poem shows a tendency to overwrite. "What do you feel yourself to be on nights like this?" asks the poet, and answers:
A pimple on the brow of angered Hecate,
Whose menstrual blood distends the sunsets
Across the surface of the skies.
I hear Anne Sexton in these lines, and they are more gross than engrossing.
Barskova writes classically restrained poems, however, and one of the finest is "Reflection." As the speaker and her lover gaze at their reflections in a piano, they enter a chasm, "And the further, the deeper, the darker the lacquer." Barskova seems to be pursuing a course into the depths while ranging high and free over the steppes. She is a very stimulating writer to read.
Barskova looks to the tremendous Russian literary tradition in which she moves and has her being. Her poems engage in a very lively manner with canonical writers such as Pushkin, Nabokov, Akhmatova and Brodsky. In the sequence "Pantheon," she riffs off the name of Pushkin by inventing poetic lookalikes such as Khlopushkin, Pliushkin and Peshkin. Her engagement with the tradition is at the same time deeply personal. On a visit to Prague, she writes movingly in "Motherhood and Childhood" about the death of Nabokov's mother in that city.
Besides the giants, she is also well-versed in a whole host of less-known Russian authors. The endnotes to this translation by Boris Dralyuk and David Stromberg usefully identify her references, but since I do not know the authors I read the poems feeling like an outsider peering into a rather grand house. Barskova loved Shakespeare from the beginning, as evinced in a series of poems written in the voices of various characters from Hamlet. Later, her residence in the United States has drawn her to American poets such as Elizabeth Bishop, to whom her poem "Brazilian Scenes" owes a creative debt.
Unlike Bishop, however, Barskova's imagery often strikes me as arbitrary rather than precise. Sometimes the juxtaposition of images produces a frisson, but at other times the clash falls into a heap. I don't understand, for instance, why "Verses of Winter Gone By. From Henry VI" begins with Hecate, continues with Dante, and ends with Antinous. The same poem shows a tendency to overwrite. "What do you feel yourself to be on nights like this?" asks the poet, and answers:
A pimple on the brow of angered Hecate,
Whose menstrual blood distends the sunsets
Across the surface of the skies.
I hear Anne Sexton in these lines, and they are more gross than engrossing.
Barskova writes classically restrained poems, however, and one of the finest is "Reflection." As the speaker and her lover gaze at their reflections in a piano, they enter a chasm, "And the further, the deeper, the darker the lacquer." Barskova seems to be pursuing a course into the depths while ranging high and free over the steppes. She is a very stimulating writer to read.
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