Subterranean Fire

The Selected Poetry of Natalka Bilotserkivets

Natalka Bilotserkivets, Michael M. Naydan, James Brasfield, Lada Kolomiyets, Olena Jennings, Dzvinia Orlowsky

• Publisher: Glagoslav Publications B.V. (N)
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781912894956
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

A passionate intensity moves through the subjective, intimate voice of the poems of Natalka Bilotserkivets.Through translation, Subterranean Firecontinues their mysterious pilgrimage to their second lives.From one of the true inheritors – touchstones like Anna Akhmatova, Gabriela Mistral, and Louise Bogan – the poems of Bilotserkivets inhabit us as they include us in their transcendent borderland.

– American poet James Brasfield

With great depths of feeling, Natalka Bilotserkivets's poetry guides us into that uncharted territory where word meets heart. The poems, spare and often questioning, redeem that land between what is most difficult to grasp and most difficult to forget.

– Dzvinia Orlowsky, American poet and translator

Natalka Bilotserkivets's poetry …is characterized by tight form and elegiac feelings … this reader was impressed by the liquid cascade of alliterations in her … poems.

– Professor Andrew Wachtel

…contemporary Ukrainian literature has been enriched by the unique pearl of [Natalka Bilotserkivets's] intellectual and lyrical poetry.

– Ukrainian prose writer, poet, and essayist Kost Moskalets

I am certain that this first-rate modern Ukrainian poet could become a star of world lyric poetry…

– Ukrainian poet and prose writer Ludmyla Taran

from the collection NOVEMBER (1989)

NIGHT PLANES

Night planes fly past invisibly,

Snow falls on the city street,

At one AM they turn off the dim street lamps,

And the last tram cars disappear...

---

Only

drowsy buildings are left,

Trees are dark,

but the heart is hot

Like a warm clod of living earth.

---

These days like years

pass slowly,

These days of ill-defined fog, of snows,

Breakfasts, lunches, and monotonous events...

But listen–

every so often at night

Tragic keys turn in the gates,

And specters of unknown

recollections

Rise through the rattle of night planes.

---

The shattered window of a forgotten school

Will shine in the heart of the city–or maybe it’s a cathedral.

Or the squares of shattered streets,

Or the clearings of winter forests...

And from the sky

Choirs of frail tender voices sing old lullabies from above

As well as the first words of lifeless children’s primers.

---

...Night planes fly past far off in the distance,

Leaving strange silver

specters,

As though beyond them in soldiers’s overcoats,

In concentration camp jackets,

in women’s rags–

Oh no! in bright holiday attire!

Columns of children,

child after child...

Destination, contents?

Simply a vision of life

At midnight, in the time of violet planes...

---

– Translated by Michael M. Naydan

THE PICASSO ELEGY

That very night the snow began. Go,

Soundless snow, through dark lips,

Through bridges, as though through plaited dreams,

And rooftops:

---

Orchards of cold mica

Are in white clothes with black arms...

So awaken

This morning above us:

---

Artist, you’re still young,

Go to the poor and the weary,

To homeless children and blind men without kin,

Women without love, mothers without good looks–

To the inns, the mad houses and hospitals,

To the taverns,

to the tears of sluggish water.

Artist, you are still young,

You still know wretchedness and poverty,

The damp dust of garrets, the dampness,

A chair and a bed.

And to the autumn darkness–

A friend in a coffee house in blue smoke.

---

...To where do these blue coffee houses fly,

Where do these pink feelings roam,

These wandering and tender acrobats?

–To maturity, yes, to peacefulness, to plenty,

To the mem...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• THE TRANSLATORS
• FOREWORD
• from the collection SUBTERRANEAN FIRE (1984)
• from the collection NOVEMBER (1989)
• from the collection ALLERGY (1999)
• SIX POEMS
• from KNIFE AND OTHER POEMS
• from ALLERGY
• from THE METRO
• from the collection HOTEL CENTRAL (2004)
• AFTERWORD
• Notes
• Thank you for purchasing this book
• Glagoslav Publications Catalogue