Translated by Vitaliy Chernetsky and Ostap KinAlthough a novelist, essayist, literary critic and translator, Yuri Andrukhovych is best known in Ukraine for his poetry. Born in 1960 in Ivano Frankivsk (then Stanislav), he is a founding member of Bu-Ba-Bu (burlesk, balahan, bufonda), a group of poets formed in 1985 with fellow writers Oleksandr Irvanets and Viktor Neborak. Through community creation, the group sought to bring a rebellious carnival spirit to Ukrainian literature, not only as a means of undermining the soviet doctrine of socialist realism, but also as an antidote to any poetry espousing a serious, dogmatic form. While Bu-Ba-Bu’s work spanned more than a decade, the peak of their activity occurred between 1988 and 1992, at the intersection of the twilight years of the Soviet Union and the nascent years of an independent Ukraine. One of their most famous productions, the poetic opera, Chrysler Imperial, was staged in the Lviv Theater of Opera and Ballet in 1992.
Translator Vitaliy Chernetsky is an associate professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Kansas. He has translated two of Andrukhovych’s works, The Muscoviad and Twelve Circles. Ostap Kin is the author of New York Elegies: Ukrainian Poetry on the City. Library
we look for the most precise knowledge on ladders we scale the highest floors of the library we rummage through the stacks alongside spiders raising chalk clouds under the ceiling as if atop the steepest tower we feel like aerial gymnasts out of breath and barely keep our balance we dive into the thickest volumes no longer hoping to ever get out the books consume us like the sea we grip carved protrusions barely able to stay afloat and when we’re about to run out of strength sneezing and covered in plaster it feels like success to find in the thickest of goatskin and leather pressed tightly against the wall the light and warm nest of a street swallow
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