Sample: Return Address, or The Poem Of Leadership (in Ukrainian)
DRUHA SPROBA: VYBRANE (A SECOND TRY: COLLECTED POEMS). – 2nd ed., with new poems added.
– Kyiv: Fact, 2009. – 432 p.
Druha Sproba: Vybrane (A Second Try: Collected Poems). Foreword by Leonid Ushkalov. Kyiv: Fact, 2005. - 320 p.
Letter From the Summer House
Translated by Douglas Smith
Dear_______,
The land's rusty again.
Acid rain: our blackened cucumber vines
Jut from the earth like scorched wire.
And I'm not sure about the orchard this year.
It nees a good cleaning up,
But I'm scared of those trees. When I walk
Among them, it feels like I'm going to step
On some carcass rotting in the tall grass,
Something crawling with worms, something smiling
Sickly in the hot sun.
And I get nervous over the sounds:
The day before yesterday, in the thicket, meowing,
The monotonous creaking of a tree,
The suppressed cackling of geese - all constantly
Straining for the same note. Do you remember
The dry elm, the one lightning turned
Into a giant charred bone last summer?
Sometimes I thing it lords
Over the whole garden, infecting everything with rabid madness.
How do mad trees act?
Maybe they run amok like derailed streetcars. Anyway,
I keep an axe by the bed, just in case.
At least the butterflies are mating: we'll have
Caterpillars soon. Oh yes, the neighbour's daughter
Gave birth - a boy, a bit overdue. He had hair and teeth
Already, and could be a mutant,
Because yesterday, only nine days old, he shouted,
"Turn off the sky!", and hasn't said a word since.
Otherwise, he's a healthy baby.
So, there it is. If you can get away
For the weekend, bring me something to read,
Preferably in the language I don't know.
The ones I call mine are exhausted.
Оksana Zabuzhko reads from her poetry (in Ukrainian). Dnipropetrovsk,
3.04.2009
From the author's reading at the International Poetry Festival of Medellin
(Columbia). June 2002. (Reading in Ukrainian, subtitles in Spanish)
Novyj Zakon Arkhimeda. Vybrani virshi 1980-1998
(New Archimedes' Rule. Selected Poems 1980-1998)
Kharkiv: Acta, 2000. - 248 p.
Avtostop
(Hitchhiking)
Kiev, 1994. - 95 p.
Dyrygent Ostannyoji Svichky
(The Conductor of the Last Candle)
Kiev, 1990. - 143 p.
Travnevyj Inij
(May Hoarfrost)
Kiev, 1985. - 64 p.
A Kingdom of Fallen Statues. Poems and Essays by Oksana Zabuzhko
Transl. by Marco Carynnyk, Askold Melnyczuk, Michael M.Naydan, Wanda Phipps, Lisa Sapinkopf, Douglas Burnet Smith, and Virlana Tkacz.
Toronto: Wellspring Ltd., 1996. - 94 p.
"I feel really honoured to be chosen by your highly respectable foundation for a 1997 Poetry Prize. I believe this is all the more significant in view of the fact that Ukrainian literature is still very poorly known in the West. Your choice has proved that the language of poetry can be understood even without any specialized knowledge of a country and its literary tradition - in other words, that in our crazy world poetry, however esoteric genre it may seem to be, retains its role as the universal means of "soul-to-soul" communication, crossing all frontiers. If so - there is still a hope for all of us for the century to come. Thank you for maintaining this hope".
From Oksana Zabuzhko's Acceptance Letter to Global Commitment Foundation, May 16, 1997.
Also: SIX POEMS. In: From Three Worlds
The most arresting of the poets represented here is Oksana Zabuzhko, whose
forthright eroticism and sardonic feminist voice fully justify her
reputation as “the Ukrainian Sylvia Plath.”
“Translating the poets you admire is like receiving a blood transfusion: it makes you open to imperceptibly new ways of feeling hitherto disguised by a foreign speech”.
Enter Fortinbras (A Kingdom of Fallen Statues)
Adam Michnik, Oksana Zabuzhko and Czeslaw Milosz at the International Writers’ Forum «Intellectuals and Social Change in Central and Eastern Europe», Rutgers University, April 1992.
Oksana Zabuzhko has translated into Ukrainian the poetry of Czeslaw Milosz, Sylvia Plath, Marie Howe, Lucie Brock-Broido, and Sue Standing.
