Ilya Kaminsky, from "Musica Humana", Dancing in Odessa: Poems
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why do all the words sound heavier in my native language?
— @metamorphesque, Yoojin Grace Wuertz (Mother Tongue), Still Dancing: An Interview With Ilya Kaminsky (by Garth Greenwell), Jhumpa Lahiri (Translating Myself and Others), @lifeinpoetry
˗ˏˋ☕ˎˊ˗
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Ilya Kaminsky, from Deaf Republic: Poems; “Alfonso, in snow”
[Text ID: "You are alive, I whisper to myself, therefore something in you listens."]
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ilya kaminsky, “we lived happily during the war”
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firing squad by Ilya Kaminsky
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I must walk on the edge of myself.
Ilya Kaminsky, from Dancing in Odessa; “Author’s Prayer,
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Ilya Kaminsky, from "Author's Prayer", Dancing in Odessa
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[transcript: 1. “god is fucking with my oblivion. if he wants forgiveness, he shouldn’t have given us memory.”
2. “your god comes and he is ordinary and terrible. he confers with the doctors at your kitchen table and tells you to eat….”
3. “our father who art in heaven. our father who art buried in the yard.”
4. “at the trial of god, we will ask: ‘why did you allow all this?’ and the answer will be an echo: ‘why did you allow all this?’”
5. “i don’t believe in god as much as i believe in the interrogation room. i believe in someone placing a loaded gun on a metal table between me and a door. who gets to be god then? will god be the bullet or the table or the door.”
6. “every spy knows this. some say god is where we put our sorrow. god says, which one of you fuckers can get to me first?”/end transcript.]
vi khi nao— fish in exile/leila chatti— portrait of the illness as nightmare/richard siken— snow and dirty rain/ilya kaminsky— a city like a guillotine shivers on its way to the neck/hanif abdurraqib— all the tv shows are about cops/richard siken— war of the foxes
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Ilya Kaminsky, from "Dancing in Odessa"
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We Lived Happily During the War, Ilya Kaminsky
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Author's Prayer
by Ilya Kaminsky
If I speak for the dead, I must leave
this animal of my body,
I must write the same poem over and over,
for the empty page is a white flag of their surrender.
If I speak of them, I must walk on the edge
of myself, I must live as a blind man
who runs through the rooms without
touching the furniture.
Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking “What year is it?”
I can dance in my sleep and laugh
in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,
I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak
of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say
is a kind of petition and the darkest
days must I praise.
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Ilya Kaminsky, from Deaf Republic: Poems; "A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck"
[Text ID: "At the trial of God, we will ask: why did you allow all this? / And the answer will be an echo: why did you allow all this?"]
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