The poet
and translator Olga Livshin has published a new book, A
Life Replaced,
that includes both her original writing, and new translations of the work of
the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, as well as writing by a more recent
poet, Vladimir Gandelsman.
What makes this collection unique is that Livshin, who spent her childhood in the former Soviet Union and has since lived in the United States, engages energetically and creatively with the two poets she translates and with the countries she has lived in, asking thought-provoking questions about a range of topics.
Here is an
example of one poem in the book where Livshin directly addresses the Akhmatova
poem that comes before it in the collection, and uses that as a springboard to
talk about history, Livshin’s own life, motherhood, and her reaction to the
status quo in both the land of her birth and her adopted country.
 |
| Olga Livshin |
Olga
Livshin
Newscast Akhmatova
Always
the same question. What makes this
century worse than any before it?—the twenty-year-old Anna asks in a poem.
Her
century swelled with the inequities of all the previous ones.—I grew up
there—at the end of the revolution that overflowed by seventy years—was rocked
with her tight-lipped grief of her poems—quoted by my mother, who had her
face—whose face I now wear.
What
news for her would make an adequate reply?
*
News:
I have now lived most of my life in a country that, as Akhmatova would say, is relatively vegetarian.—People aren’t the main staple of its diet.—Immigrants
the world over say, We didn’t come to this
country, that country, or that country—any country but—to mourn our lives.
But
the country where I went to high school, college, and grad school, where I
later taught at my alma mater—school
is one of the favorite dishes.—Routine cannibalism.—Bomb threats: we were
evacuated into the parking-lot sunshine.—Spit three times over the shoulder:
you and you, but not you, will avoid being eaten.
*
News:
After three days in labor, I saw my son. Warmth rushed through me as I lay cut
up, belly-up.—I said: We’ll have so much
fun together, you and I.
The
word fun thus entered my overcast
Russian worldview.—Every day I meet him after school: he colors the world
cerulean.
*
Anna
Andreyevna’s son spent most of his life in a prison camp.—Because of his
origins.—She could not rescue him even by writing odes to Stalin.—Most Russian
readers do not know, or else cannot remember, whether she wrote such odes.—She
did.
*
Old
news: Russia is carnivorous.—New news: now carnivorous beyond its borders.
Sort-of-new
news: this country never stopped being carnivorous.—America’s eye, more
technologically avian, looks into every home.—News: we might need a different
word than home.
*
In
the home of her poetry, Akhmatova has found room for her whole country.—Found a
chronology: from lush turn-of-the-century eroticism to imprisonment—to
oblivion, intended—but not accomplished—by the state.—In her stance of the
memory keeper, she stood immovable.—Like a steppe baba statue: Paleolithic,
gray; huge.
*
At
the end of her life, Akhmatova said: My life had
been replaced.
*
News:
A few years back, a young woman in Moscow founded the first hospice for
children in Russia.—This woman, a friend of mine, is now in her early thirties,
a seasoned administrator for the hospice, somewhat cynical.—Her hospice, that
colorful refuge, is still alive.—
*
Because
my replies are like light touch, their comfort cool and faithless, each
fingertip a raindrop.—I refuse to be separated from her: to sum her up.—She is
needed.
*
Who, me? you ask. You seem amused.
Your
rhetorical questions are needed, for they demand a specific integrity from each
of us.—Your stone house of womanhood is needed, a house of protest.
You
are the one with the news for this next century: This century is worse than those before it. Change something.
Poem ©
2019 Olga Livshin
Zack Rogow’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies
Zack Rogow’s most recent translation, Bérénice 1934–44: An Actress in Occupied Paris by Isabelle Stibbe
Zack Rogow’s most recent book of poems, Irreverent Litanies
Zack Rogow’s most recent translation, Bérénice 1934–44: An Actress in Occupied Paris by Isabelle Stibbe
Getting the Most from Your Writing Workshop
How Not to Become a Literary Dropout
Putting Together a Book Manuscript
Working with a Writing Mentor
How to Deliver Your Message
Does the Muse Have a Cell Phone?
Why Write Poetry?
Poetic Forms: Introduction; The Sonnet, The Sestina, The Ghazal, The Tanka, The Villanelle
Praise and Lament
How to Be an American Writer
Writers and Collaboration
Types of Closure in Poetry