Polina Barskova Books

Poetry. This anthology presents a group of writers and a literary phenomenon that has been unknown even to Russian readers for 70 years, obfuscated by historical amnesia. Gennady Gor, Pavel Zaltsman, Dmitry Maksimov, Sergey Rudakov, and Vladimir Sterligov wrote these works in 1942, during the most severe winter of the Nazi Siege of Leningrad (1941-1944). In striking contrast to state-sanctioned, heroic "Blockade" poetry in which the stoic body of the exemplary citizen triumphs over death, the poems gathered here show the Siege individual (blokadnik) as a weak and desperate incarnation of Job. These poets wrote in situ about the famine, disease, madness, cannibalism, and prostitution around them¿subjects so tabooed in those most-Soviet times that they would never think of publishing. Moreover, the formal ambition and macabre avant-gardism of this uncanny body of work match its horrific content, giving birth to a "poor" language which alone could reflect the depth of suffering and psychological destruction experienced by victims of that historical disaster. Polina Barskova, a Russian- language poet and scholar of the Siege, edited this volume from archival materials, and provided guidance to the translators of the poems: Anand Dibble, Ben Felker-Quinn, Ainsley Morse, Eugene Ostashevsky, Rebekah Smith, Charles Swank, Jason Wagner, and Matvei Yankelevich.

"Two lovers remain in a gallery of the Hermitage, refusing to shelter underground while Leningrad is under siege. Freezing and gnawed by hunger, they recite poems and stories to pass the time, re-enacting the paintings that are being evacuated from the museum. As their voices and bodies begin to fail and fragment, their conversation is interspersed with sections from a diary - a real document from a person who died during the blockade. This is the centrepiece of Living Pictures, Polina Barskova's genre-defying collection of fiction that reckons with the history and aftermath of the siege of Leningrad. Drawing on archival material and refracting it through fiction, Barskova draws arresting, fearless portraits of the lives caught up in the blockade. A work of stunning inventiveness and richly poetic language, Living Pictures is a dazzling collage of a city and a culture in crisis."--Provided by publisher

Poetry. Translated by Valzhyna Mort. The Siege of Leningrad began in 1941 and lasted 872 days, resulting in the most destructive blockade in history. Already shaken by Stalin's purges of the '30s, Leningrad withstood the siege at a great human cost. AIR RAID takes us through the archives of memory and literature in this city of death. Polina Barskova's polyphonic poems stretch the boundaries of poetic form--this is what we're left with after poetry's failure to save nations and people: post-death, post-Holocaust, post-Siege, post-revolution; post-marriage and post-literature. How does language react to such a catastrophe? How does a poet find language for what cannot be told? This new translation of a leading contemporary Russian poet confronts English excavating its muteness, stutter, and curse.

Die Gedichte von Polina Barskova zum ersten Mal auf Deutsch. – „Dieses Buch verzaubert.“ Ilya Kaminsky Polina Barskova gilt dank ihrer formalen Virtuosität sowie dem abgründigen Humor als Erbin der großen russischen Poesie von Brodsky bis Charms. Vor fünfundzwanzig Jahren ist sie nach Kalifornien ausgewandert, von wo aus sie die Absurdität der Welt betrachtet. Ihre Lyrik ist mal anspielend, mal szenisch ausspielend, voll überbordender erzählerischer und stilistischer Einfälle. Weil sie sich für den Dialog mit ukrainischen Dichterinnen einsetzt, zirkulieren in ihrer Heimat ihre Verse nur noch klandestin. Zum ersten Mal wird eine Auswahl aus ihrem Gesamtwerk auf Deutsch präsentiert, einschließlich ihres viel bewunderten Zyklus über die Blockade Leningrads im Zweiten Weltkrieg.