Tag Archives: Ilya Kaminsky

From May 2022, The La Romita 2020 Online Poetry Community’s Kaminsky Prompt Poems – Part Four

                                          A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on Its Way to the Neck — Ilya Kaminsky from A City Like a Guillotine Shivers on its Way to the Neck from Deaf Republic, Graywolf Press, 2019 […]

From May 2022, The La Romita 2020 Online Poetry Community’s Kaminsky Prompt Poems – Part Three

What something in me listens —after Ilya Kaminsky I try to hear the people breathing in parkades and the sound of talking over Molotov cocktails over making them and later the fhhhhhh shatter whoosh of the toss and the blaze in the street I don’t like to play the video footage the sound a peephole […]

From May 2022, The La Romita 2020 Online Poetry Community’s Kaminsky Prompt Poems – Part Two

REMAIN SILENT (With thanks to Ilya Kaminsky’s Deaf Republic) Deafness passes through us like a police whistle Dogs understand everything and bark and bark Ilya Kaminsky from the poem Alfonso Stands Answerable from Deaf Republic, Graywolf Press, 2019 Teaching Dwight Not to bark when he sees Not to bark when he hears As a service […]

From May 2022, The La Romita 2020 Online Poetry Community’s Kaminsky Prompt Poems – Part One

For Ukraine, Listen You are alive, I whisper to myself, therefore something in you listens — Ilya Kaminsky from the poem Alfonso, In Snow from Deaf Republic You tell me you don’t recognize your life that you hear even fear is prohibited so you hold yours close. You are running, always running,  away from all […]

Found and Erasure Poem – from an Interview with Ukrainian Writer Vladislav Kitik and Excerpts from Other Interviews in the Same Article by Ilya Kaminsky in The Paris Review, March 24th, 2022

AN ERASURE AND FOUND POEM A seagull, all fluffed up, sits at the edge of the pier, chest against the wind. A sharp explosion  interrupts its contemplation, the gray water, it spreads its wings. Seagulls don’t know what war is. But after sixteen days, the gulls overcome confusion, learn not to fly too far when […]

How To Praise This Mutilated World? – A Post Triggered by Ilya Kaminsky’s Twitter Feed Today – In Response: Two Poems – One from American Poet Maggie Smith and One from Canadian Poet Patrick Lane, from His Posthumous Collection Released Last Week

OscarDomesticated @OscDomesticated A note from #Mariupol : “Dima, Mom was killed on 9 March 2022. She died quickly. Then the house burnt down. Dima, I’m sorry I didn’t protect her. I buried Mom near the kindergarten” – and the scheme where exactly. It’s so horrible that tears are freezing in the eyes. 2:03 PM · […]

At War with Words – Three Poems by the Ukrainian Poet Lyuba Yakimchuk and some More Words from Ilya Kaminsky

Crow, Wheels When the city was destroyed, they started fighting over the cemetery. It was right before Easter and wooden crosses over the freshly dug graves put out their paper blossoms— red, blue, yellow, neon green, orange, raspberry pink. Joyful relatives poured vodka for themselves and for the dead—straight into their graves. And the dead […]

In Love with This World But Telling the Not-Always-Beautiful Truth of It – Some Wisdom and A Poem from Ukrainian American Poet Ilya Kaminsky – Part of an On-Going Series of Poems Dealing With War and Its Consequences

In a Time of Peace Inhabitant of earth for forty something years I once found myself in a peaceful country. I watch neighbors open their phones to watch a cop demanding a man’s driver’s license. When a man reaches for his wallet, the cop shoots. Into the car window. Shoots. It is a peaceful country. […]

A Love Poem to Lviv (Lvov, Lwowa) and Ukraine! And a Tribute (R.I.P.) to Adam Zagajewski (1945-2021) the Polish Poet, Born in Lviv When it Was Part of Poland

To go to Lvov (Jechać do Lwowa) To go to Lvov. Which station for Lvov, if not in a dream, at dawn, when dew gleams on a suitcase, when express trains and bullet trains are being born. To leave in haste for Lvov, night or day, in September or in March. But only if Lvov […]

Czeslaw Milosz – A Tribute – Part Two – A Poem to Honour the Men and Women in Ukraine in Wartime, February 2022

Here is the great paradox of poetry and of the imaginative arts in general. Faced with the brutality of the historical onslaught, they are practically useless. Yet they verify our singularity, they strike and stake out the ore of self which lies at the base of every individuated life. In one sense the efficacy of […]