Arkadii Dragomoschenko; Description

Translated from the Russian by Lyn Hejinian and Elena Balashova

Introduction by Michael Molnar

Series No.: SMC 009

ISBN: 978-1557130754, Pages: 135

Russian Literature, Poetry

A Sun & Moon title.

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The works in this first English-language publication by the Soviet poet are descriptions of his perceptions in words that have little relation to their affixed meanings. The poet believes that words ought not define "how our knowledge should exist" because language cannot tell the whole story--it is the silence, or emptiness, between words that represents the way we see the world. In one poem, Dragomoschenko advises,

Don't talk about grass.

If you simply mention birds, like wine they're sure to appear.

In another, the poet refers to the mouth, the sayer of language, as

that disembodied

brother of the forehead,

of dry contemplation

in seeds of inaudible ignorance like a net

set to destroy the mind caught in stagnant meaning.

(Publisher's Weekly)