WorldView Magazine: Poetry
Intimate and Lyrical Poetry by Ukrainian Poet Natalka Bilotserkivets. Her Work Has a New Resonance and Urgency.
Eccentric Days Of Hope And Sorrow By Natalka Bilotserkivets Translated from the Ukrainian by Ali Kinsella and Dzvinia Orlowsky Lost Horse Press Reviewed by Steven Boyd Saum Prologue to this collection spanning four decades is the poem “ДІТИ,” or “Children.” It’s a word that readers have seen in photos from Ukraine scores of times since February. Usually it is rendered in Russian, for the benefit of the invaders. Spray-painted on gates to a yard in a village house. In pen on a sign taped to the inside window of a car fleeing rocket fire and shelling. Spelled out in enormous letters...
Lines of Joy and Memory, Death and Rebirth: DEMO by Charlie Smith
DEMO | Poems By Charlie Smith W.W. Norton Reviewed by Steven Boyd Saum Early on in Charlie Smith’s recent collection comes the poem “Samsara,” lines of joy and memory and death and rebirth. How it begins: “The ocean, uncomfortable with itself, bangs and slurs, / mixing flavors, holding its own against infinity, scarred with ice.” Before it ends, he assesses, “I’ve caught up lately on everything / but time.” In between, the poem traverses continents and piano concertos, seasons and marriages, plum flowers and the first pear blossoms. The images summoned are in a voice at once exuberant and...
Sketches in Words and Images — and an Invitation to Dine with His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie I
POETRY SKETCHES A PEACE CORPS MEMOIR By Eldon Katter Peace Corps Writers Reviewed by Kathleen Coskran Eldon Katter sketches with images and words alike. He had the foresight to chronicle his time with the first group of Peace Corps Volunteers in Ethiopia (1962–64) through short poems and drawings — both his and his students’. He had the fortune to be assigned to teach in Harar, Ethiopia — one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, the only walled city in Ethiopia, and now a World Heritage Site. I don’t think many subsequent Volunteers received an engraved invitation from...
