Ian Ross Singleton (Инь и Ян)

Ian Ross Singleton (Инь и Ян)

  • About Ian Ross Singleton
  • Contact
  • Curriculum Vitae
  • Two Big Differences
21 April 2022

Does Writing War Poetry Bring any Redemption?

I reviewed the Words for War anthology from 2017 still and even more relevant today.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • LinkedIn

Like this:

Like Loading...

Related

Written by Ian Ross Singleton Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with Poetry, Translation, Ukraine, war
“to live with it” by Oksana Gadzhiy
Tairovsky Cemetery

About Ian Ross Singleton

  • "Only Odessa: On Ian Ross Singleton’s 'Two Big Differences'"
  • A Dreamscape of Longing: *Two Big Differences* by Ian Ross Singleton (The Rumpus)
  • Ian Ross Singleton on Amazon
  • Interview with Ian Singleton (David Alan Binder)
  • Interview with Ian Singleton (Fringe)
  • Poets and Writers
  • Speaking in Tongues: An Interview with Ian Ross Singleton (Fiction Writers Review)

Fiction

  • *Odessitka* (excerpt) (Cardinal Points)
  • First Time (New Madrid) “It was like looking into a mirror. She was surprised A.J. could still appear so innocent, when she saw the live-motion portrait of him on the television more than a year later. She had seen that primed glance, like the ting off the tip of a fang…”
  • Her Pictures of the South (Fiddleblack) “Lynn’s first photographs of him, taken in a diner unawares, reveal a sneering figure surrounded by a gang of boys hunkered in a booth, devouring sopping fries, wearing a stressed leather jacket and threadbare jeans, pouncing in his seat…”
  • Michigan Central (Digital Americana) “I was only nineteen, alone, out of money, and ‘Auld Lang Syne’ was striking up. When he cracked the seal on a pint of Mohawk vodka and offered, I threw back…”
  • Sweetgum (Fiddleblack) “The sun’s just gone under, the livid pallor of all the surface, save the sweetgum, sucks at me. My neck snaps, I twitch. I shut my window and ride on. The empty fields course and whisper past, the earth rolling over on her shoulder from me…”
  • The Lost Soul Boys (Prick of the Spindle) “At school, we have to tuck our shirts in, remove any piercings. We have to buzzcut our hair. They confiscated my skull rings, my spike bracelet, and my handcuff belt. My head aches from the fluorescent light, my butt from the welded jailhouse desks…”
  • Two Big Differences “This story is the American English version of one that should take place in Ukrainian Russian. Odessan Russian, Zina would say. She would call me Valinka or Valya or Valentine. Zina…how would she tell this story?”

Fiction Writers Review

  • "A Story is a House: an Interview With Kristina Gorcheva-Newberry"
  • An Interview with Laura Thomas
  • Apollo In The Grass by Aleksandr Kushner
  • Betrayers
  • Black Holes and Blue Windows
  • Dystopias Future and Past
  • Imagination Pointing Backwards: an Interview with Mikhail Iossel
  • Irony is the New Chastity: An Interview with Charles Baxter
  • Little Histories in Svetlana Alexievich's Secondhand Time
  • Of Translation and Politics in Russian Literature
  • The Translingual Novel
  • The Value of Naïveté: Shishkin’s Maidenhair in Russian and English

Los Angeles Review of Books

  • "Go Home and Keep Going: A Review of Immigrant City by David Bezmozgis"
  • "God is Genderqueer: A Conversation with H. L. Hix"
  • "I'm Sure You Understand": On Pavel Lembersky’s “The Death of Samusis, and Other Stories”
  • "Never Too Soon: a Conversation With Leland Cheuk"
  • "Only in Her Head: On Mona Awad’s 'All’s Well'"
  • "That Day: On Vince Passaro's 'Crazy Sorrow'"

Nonfiction

  • *Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine* (Asymptote)
  • A Prize Muzhik Shirt
  • Gryphon by Charles Baxter, Old and Cold by Jim Nisbet (Word Riot)
  • Résumé Against Boredom, Occupy the Ports (Fringe)
  • Shirley Jackson : the Library of America Anthology (Ploughshares)

Other Websites

  • My Teacher Galina Shabelsky (1930-2020) The memorial for my teacher, Galina Shabelsky.

Poetry

  • Breaking Ice (Dr. Hurley's Snake Oil Cure)
  • The Villainy of Hamlet (The Toucan)

Translation

  • "How We Buried You…" and "Reading Samizdat" (EastWest Literary Forum)
  • "Janiculum" / "The Prose of Life" / "A Letter from Zürau" by Marina Eskin (The Cafe Review)
  • "Janiculum" by Marina Eskina (The Wax Paper) “The hill’s shadow covers the sandy eternal city like the tide,/ as if time wants to wipe itself out, level off its depth./ Sun melts his back, yet the victor stands astride./ It’s our turn to decide: Rome or death…”
  • "Life's More Enduring Than War" (Asymptote) “When all the words run out,/ in bird language, we’ll proclaim,/ in one universal roll call—/ our homeland is alive.”
  • "Reading Samizdat" by Marina Eskina (Saint Ann's Review) “In the ear, the boiler’s chirring noise./ In the kitchen, Galich’s broken voice.”
  • "to live with it" by Oksana Gadzhiy (Springhouse Journal)
  • A Letter from Zürau by Marina Eskina (Asymptote) “Dreams about mice bode despair. The horde buries/ the cat, then envelops the horse from head to hoof,/ and the rider gallops astride mice…”
  • Cafe Review Reading
  • How We Buried You I Don’t Remember (To Father) by Marina Eskina (Cardinal Points) “Sorry that, on the way home/ from the burial, I probably counted crows./ How we buried you I don’t remember…”
  • The Prose of Life by Marina Eskina (Cardinal Points) As for the prose of life, just let it be,/ whether and what for it’s got poetry,/ and what string, other than the one you pluck,/ resonates with the wail of ambulance or fire truck…

Categories

Tags

Beckett Bezmozgis Brecht Cambridge Writers' Workshop Character Character Development Characters Charles Baxter Coetzee Denis Johnson Dovlatov early success Edward P. Jones Empathy Eudora Welty Eugenides Fiction Fiction vs Nonfiction Fiction Writers Review Gabriel García Márquez Genderqueer George Saunders Imagination Isaak Babel Jhumpa Lahiri Jim Shepard kafka Love Love in the Time of Cholera Maidan Masha Gessen Mattison novel Odesa Odessa Palestine Poetry Prilepin Pussy Riot Rachel Kushner Russian literature Russian novel Russian poetry self-translation short story Short Story Collection Solzhenitsyn soviet history Theroux Tolstoy Translation translingual translingualism Ukraine union war War and Peace Zionism Бабель Война и мир Довлатов Катаев Киев Лермонтов Лимонов Майдан Одеса Одесса Прилепин Тольстой Украина Чехов Юрий Олеша остранение русский

Ian Ross Singleton (Twitter)

  • RT @FordhamFacultyU: In the thick of our compensation and benefits proposals. Thanks to all who are able to join for a bit and we'll see yo… 1 week ago
  • RT @iuditha_balint: @KlausW_Pohlmann @krieghofer @QuoteResearch @kabel_isa @suhrkamp @holdengraber Es stammt tatsächlich aus den Zürauer Ze… 2 weeks ago
  • This thread can be read here: singletonian.com/2022/05/02/ode… 2 weeks ago
Follow Ian Ross Singleton (Инь и Ян) on WordPress.com

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Archives

Blog at WordPress.com.
  • Follow Following
    • Ian Ross Singleton (Инь и Ян)
      • Join 579 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • Ian Ross Singleton (Инь и Ян)
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Copy shortlink
    • Report this content
    • View post in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
%d bloggers like this: