Oksana Maksymchuk

A bit of a creepy cover but it's followed by a very nice preface by the editors, and then the reader is treated to an excellent introduction by poet Ilya Kaminsky.

This collection covers sixteen different Ukrainian poets, eight women and eight men. Their works have been translated from the original Ukrainian or Russian. Interestingly, most of the poems are NOT about war, but I transcribe here one, poem by Anastasia Afanasieva that is about war:

Can there be poetry after:
Yasynuvata, Horlivka, Savur-Mohyla, Novoazovsk
After:
Krasnyi-Luch, Donetsk, Luhansk
After
Sorting bodies in repose from the dying
The hungry from those on a stroll
Long after
Poetry devolves to “autistic babbling”
Lips mating in the darkness
I ask
Half-awake
Is poetry possible
At the moment history stirs
Once its steps
Reverberate through every heart?
Impossible to speak of anything else,
Talking becomes impossible.

As I write this
Very close to me
Every hope is being ended.

Translated from the Russian by Kevin Vaughn & Maria Khotimsky… (més)