Ukrainian-American Ukrainian-Russian-Jewish-American poet, writer, critic, translator Ilya Kaminsky (we’ve written about him here and here and here) has been much in the news lately, which is often bad news for Ukrainians. Over at Lithub, you can read his 9-part essay on “Ukrainian, Russian, and the Language of War,” excerpted from Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, published by Academic Studies Press.
Meanwhile, let us here focus on the essay’s section dedicated to the young poet Lyuba Yakimchuk:
In the late 20th century, the Jewish poet Paul Celan became a patron saint of writing in the midst of crisis. Composing in the German language, he has broken speech to reflect the experience of a new, violated world. This effect is happening again—this time in Ukraine—before our very eyes.
Here is the case of poet Lyuba Yakimchuk, whose family are refugees from Pervomaisk, the city that is one of the main targets of Putin’s most recent “humanitarian aid” effort. Answering my questions about her background, Lyuba responded:
I stare into the horizon
. . . I have gotten so very old
no longer Lyuba
just a –ba.
“I was born and raised in the war-torn Luhansk region and my hometown of Pervomaisk is now occupied. In May 2014 I witnessed the beginning of the war … In February 2015 my parents and grandmother, having survived dreadful warfare, set out to leave the occupied territory. They left under shelling fire, with a few bags of clothes. A friend of mine, a [Ukrainian] soldier, almost shot my grandma as they fled.
“Discussing literature in wartime, Yakimchuk writes: ‘Literature rivals with the war, perhaps even loses to war in creativity, hence literature is changed by war.” In her poems, one sees how warfare cleaves her words: don’t talk to me about Luhansk,’ she writes, ‘it’s long since turned into hansk / Lu had been razed to the ground / to the crimson pavement.’ The bombed-out city of Pervomaisk ‘has been split into pervo and maisk‘ and the shell of Debaltsevo is now her ‘deb, alts, evo.’ Through the prism of this fragmented language, the poet sees herself:
Just as Russian-language poet Khersonsky refuses to speak his language when Russia occupies Ukraine, Yakimchuk, a Ukrainian-language poet, refuses to speak an unfragmented language as the country is fragmented in front of her eyes. As she changes the words, breaking them down and counterpointing the sounds from within the words, the sounds testify to a knowledge they do not possess. No longer lexical yet still legible to us, the wrecked word confronts the reader mutely, both within and beyond language.
Reading this poem of witness, one is reminded that poetry is not merely a description of an event; it is an event.
You can read the rest of Ilya Kaminsky’s essay here. Ukrainian poet, screenwriter, and journalist Lyuba Yakimchuk’s poem “Crow, Wheels” is here.
Tags: Ilya Kaminsky, Lyuba Yakimchuk, Paul Celan