POETRY BOOK SOCIETY CHOICE 2019 Deaf Republic opens in a time of political unrest in an occupied territory. It is uncertain where we are or when, in what country or during what conflict, but we come to recognise that these events are also happening here, right now. This astonishing parable in poems unfolds episodically like a play, its powerful narrative provoked by a tragic opening scene: when soldiers breaking up a protest kill a deaf boy, the gunshot becomes the last thing the citizens hear - in that moment, all have gone deaf. Inside this silence, their dissent becomes coordinated by sign language. The story then follows the private lives of townspeople encircled by public violence: a newly married couple, Alfonso and Sonya, expecting their child; the daring Momma Galya, instigating the insurgency from her puppet theatre; and Galya's puppeteers, covertly teaching signs by day and by night heroically luring soldiers one by one to their deaths behind the curtain. At once a love story, an elegy, and an urgent plea, Deaf Republic confronts our time's vicious atrocities and our collective silence in the face of them.

'Time is different in Odesa. It's a city outside of time'. As a child growing up in Kyiv, Yelena Yemchuk was fascinated by the reputation of Odesa as a free place during Soviet times. The city seemed full of contradictions - "acceptance but also danger. A place of jokes and characters, populated by outlaws and intellectuals." She first visited Odesa in 2003 and returned in 2015 to begin to photograph the city and its inhabitants over a period of four years. In 1981, when Yemchuk was eleven years old, her family immigrated to the United States from their home in Kyiv, Ukraine. They could tell no-one out of their family of their plans to leave and going beyond the 'Iron Curtain' at the time meant they could never return to their home country. Ten years later, when Ukraine announced its independence, the artist was able to return to her home country to visit

Described as 'a rich, reverberative dance with memories of a haunted city' (LA Times), the poems of the prize-winning debut Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic, draw on archetype, myth and Russian literary figures. Tightly realised domestic settings are invigorated with a contemporary relevance, humour and torment, and a distinctive, transcendent music. 'With his magical style in English, Kaminsky's poems in Dancing in Odessa seem like a literary counterpart to Chagall in which laws of gravity have been suspended and colors reassigned, but only to make everyday reality that much more indelible. His imagination is so transformative that we respond with equal measures of grief and exhilaration.' The American Academy of Arts and Letters 'Dancing in Odessa by Ilya Kaminsky tops the list because he is one of those rarest of finds in this or any century, a writer who establishes what poetry can be.' The New York Times

In "The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry", introduced and edited by Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris, poetic visions from the 20th century will be reinforced and in many ways revised. Alongside renowned masters, there will be many new discoveries - internationally celebrated poets who have rarely, if ever, been translated into English. In conjunction with the organization Words Without Borders - an online haven for international literature and an ally to writers all over the world-Ecco presents a paperback anthology that will surely serve as a canonical touchstone in the field of poetics, bringing voices from afar to readers everywhere. As aptly put in Words Without Borders' mission statement, this collection also serves as part of 'the ultimate aim to introduce exciting international writing to the general and literary public - travelers, teachers, students, publishers, and a new generation of eclectic readers - by presenting international literature not as a static, elite phenomenon, but a portal through which to explore the world'.

A searing testament to poetry’s power to define and defy injustice, from iconic writer-activist Serhiy Zhadan   Since the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, the Ukrainian poet Serhiy Zhadan has brought international attention to his country’s struggle through his unflinching poetry of witness. In this searing testament to poetry’s power to define and defy injustice, Zhadan honors the memory of the lost and addresses the living, inviting us to consider what language can offer to a country threatened with extinction. Young lovers, marginalized outsiders, and ordinary citizens pulse with life in a composite portrait of a people newly unified by extremity. Even in the midst of enemy fire, Zhadan’s lyrical monuments beat with a subterranean thrum of hope.   With a foreword by the poet Ilya Kaminsky, this selection of Zhadan’s poetry, forged entirely in wartime, is an homage to the Ukrainian people, a forceful reckoning with the violence of the past and present, and an act of artistic imagination that breaks with trauma and charts a new future for Ukraine.

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Editors Ilya Kaminsky and Katherine Towler have gathered conversations with nineteen of America's leading poets, reflecting upon their diverse experiences with spirituality and the craft of writing. Bringing together poets who are Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Muslim, Pagan, Native American, Wiccan, agnostic, and otherwise, this book offers frank and thoughtful consideration of themes too often polarized and politicized in our society. Participants include Li-Young Lee, Jane Hirshfield, Carolyn Forche, Gerald Stern, Christian Wiman, Joy Harjo, and Gregory Orr, and others, all wrestling with difficult questions of human existence and the sources of art.

Canting Arms (the heraldic term refers to coats of arms that are visual puns) is the fitting title for Galaicu-Păun’s selected poems. His style is rich with references at once both playful and thematically serious, ironic, at times comic, and always bristling with verbal energy and unexpected turns in strong, limber lines.. This collection spans his earlier poems with scriptural and erotic references to later, more complex political, historical, psychologically astute works, sardonic, visionary, as well as surprising.

Funny and diabolical, these short, linked, prose poems describe a girl's need to escape from a world of lust and lawnmowers into a dream world. From child to adult, the poet imagines her life as a new Houdini.

"Full of nouveau folklore, quirky unrequited narratives, and mock dream analysis, Nin Andrews' work is always surprising, sharp, and wild."-Denise Duhamel

"Pepper Facts

"It's true what they say. A certain kind of spice can get under a woman's skin. Once ingested, she will taste it in the air and on her sheets; she might feel as if she were living in a Mexican restaurant. For a while a woman might think it's the man she's sleeping with, that he's gotten inside her clothes and every cell she is. Chilies are potent, no doubt about it; some contain antibiotic properties, inspiring a fire to rise in the blood, replicating the sensation and biochemistry of romance. A woman will lie awake, tossing and stirring, unable to sleep. She will eat bowl after bowl of ice cream beneath a full moon. But in the end, she will discover it's nothing a little baking soda in her wash and toothpaste can't cure. And what a relief she will feel then! She might howl at the stars. Or dance nude in a snow storm, her arms flung wide to the wind and singing cold, happy at last to be listening to her own thoughts that promise her, never again. Never again.

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Art. Jewish Studies. If there is a country named Celania--as Julia Kristeva once proposed--its holy texts are filled with doubt, and they overcome this doubt almost successfully, with words of wrenching, uncompromised beauty.... The book in your hands is not intended to become one of those heavy scholarly tomes that serve as a "proof" of one's position in the literary/academic hierarchy. Rather, this is a collection of various works, directed at, or inspired by, the words of Paul Celan. What we wanted to make was a living anthology, in which authors observe the poet's work, read it deeply, penetrate and discuss it, but also play with it, remake it, and attempt to fit it into their own worldviews. A great poet is not someone who speaks in stadiums to a thousand listeners. A great poet is a very private person. In his privacy this poet creates a language in which he is able to speak, privately, to many people at the same time.

Boris Khersonsky and Ludmila Khersonsky write poetry that speaks to the crisis of our time, when refugees run from bombardments, nonstop propaganda flows from TV, and neighbors begin to hate their neighbors. The setting is Ukraine at the start of the twenty-first century, but it is eerily recognizable anywhere. These brief lyric poems speak about the memory of historical trauma and witness stark individual voices that pierce the wall of complacency. What is the music of such times? What is its metaphysics? This collection gives us an unflinching, memorable response.

Winner of the 2002 Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, this magical book of poems written by a Russian immigrant who came to America only a few years ago without knowing a single word of English, draws readers in ineluctably. Although a recent arrival, Kaminsky's ear for the music in English is better than most poets born here. As readers quickly realize upon opening the book, Kaminsky's poetry isn't just beautiful-it is unforgettable.

An undisputed rising poetic star, Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union. He has already received the Ruth Lilly fellowship from "Poetry "magazine and was the youngest person appointed Writer in Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy. Kaminsky, who is also almost totally deaf, will finish his law degree at the University of California in 2004.