{"id":157316,"date":"2022-02-26T14:42:48","date_gmt":"2022-02-26T19:42:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=157316"},"modified":"2022-03-24T15:44:46","modified_gmt":"2022-03-24T19:44:46","slug":"in-odesa-recommended-reading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2022\/02\/26\/in-odesa-recommended-reading\/","title":{"rendered":"In Odesa: Recommended Reading"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_157340\" style=\"width: 1010px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/odessa.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-157340\" class=\"wp-image-157340 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/odessa.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"1000\" height=\"739\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/odessa.png 1000w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/odessa-300x222.png 300w, https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/02\/odessa-768x568.png 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (min-width: 62.5em) 67vw, 100vw\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-157340\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Potemkin Steps, Odesa, Ukraine. Photograph by Dave Proffer.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>\u201cBuried in a human neck, a bullet looks like an eye, sewn in, \/ an eye looking back at one\u2019s fate.\u201d So writes the Russian-language Ukrainian poet Ludmila Khersonsky, born in Odesa. Now, President Putin claims he is sending troops to Ukraine in order to protect Russian speakers. What does Ludmila think about Putin?<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>A small gray person cancels<br \/>\nthis twenty-first century,<br \/>\nadjusts his country\u2019s clocks<br \/>\nfor the winter war.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Putin is sending troops, and the West is watching as Ukrainian soldiers, and even just young civilians, take up guns in the streets to oppose him. There is no one else to help them. I\u2019m rereading Ludmila:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The whole soldier doesn\u2019t suffer\u2014<br \/>\nit\u2019s just the legs, the arms,<br \/>\njust blowing snow<br \/>\njust meager rain.<br \/>\nThe whole soldier shrugs off hurt\u2014<br \/>\nit\u2019s just missile systems &#8230;<br \/>\nJust thunder, lightning,<br \/>\njust dreadful losses,<br \/>\njust the day with a dented helmet,<br \/>\njust God, who doesn\u2019t protect.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I first met Ludmila in Odesa in 1993. She tried to teach me English. I was a terrible student. These days, she writes to me to say that she hears explosions outside her windows. She is placing batches of newspapers on the windowsills, to fortify them. She is writing poems.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em>Ilya Kaminsky is the author of <\/em>Deaf Republic<em> (Graywolf Press) and\u00a0<\/em>Dancing In Odessa<em>\u00a0(Tupelo Press). His awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Writer\u2019s Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters\u2019 Metcalf Award, Lannan Foundation\u2019s Fellowship, and the NEA Fellowship. His poems regularly appear in Best American Poetry and Pushcart Prize anthologies. Read his poem <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/poetry\/7296\/from-last-will-and-testament-ilya-kaminsky\">\u201cFrom \u2018Last Will and Testament\u2019\u201d<\/a> in our Winter 2018 issue.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>The translations of poems used here are by Olga Livshin and Andrew Janco, Valzhyna Mort, and Katherine E. Young.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>She writes to me to say that she hears explosions outside her windows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1896,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[438],"tags":[67827,165,12805,3045],"class_list":["post-157316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-this-weeks-reading","tag-featured","tag-poetry","tag-putin","tag-ukraine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>In Odesa: Recommended Reading by Ilya Kaminsky<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"February 26, 2022 \u2013 She writes to me to say that she hears explosions outside her windows.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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