2013 etc.: Poems (Russian Edition) [Russian]

By Vasily Colchenco

This book is a poetry journal from 2013 and first few months of 2014 written in Russian (about 100 pages) and partially in English (about 30 pages). The description is in English because Amazon does not permit Cyrillic script. The book includes a few short essays and interviews, some of them dedicated to the memory of Bulat Okudzhava and Nikolay Amosov. (Interview with Bulat Okudzhava was conducted in 1994.)The cover picture is the Manhattan skyline as seen from my window. The same view was on the cover of my previous book Bilingual, published in 2012, but the buildings in place of the fallen Twin Towers are complete now. The Introduction to Bilingual recalls the events:...New towers are rising. I remember the old ones and the day they fell eleven years ago. That morning I was in class talking about genetics to some 40 undergrads. We ignored the loud honking and sirens on the street next to the Brooklyn Bridge - it had happened before - and finished the lecture on time at 9:45 a.m. It's been a good class, and I wasn't in a hurry. In the hall, students were running. The Dean passed me by and said very quietly, "The building is being evacuated. Planes hit the Twin Towers." It didn't feel like a fire drill anymore. Outside, the snowflakes appeared in the air. It seemed strange - snow in September. Only it wasn't snow. It was ash. It covered the pavement and the crowd with a thin veil. People looked at it in disbelief and shock, very much like they did in Pompeii, in Auschwitz, in Hiroshima. We've seen it in the movies. Now it was actually happening, and, like in the movies, we didn't even really know what it was. Could it be an accident? Was it war? A few days later I saw a long line on the street. New Yorkers were donating blood. The line was as multilingual as it could be. Its patient silence told me more than eloquent speeches. Many times I tried to write a song about it but couldn't. It would explain what bilingual means to me - speaking the languages of past and future, here and there, despair and hope; the inherent decency of the human heart that may transcend culture, class, age, sex, history and geography. Eleven years passed, and Manhattan is dark again in my window. This time it's the hurricane and flood of 2012. The coastline looks like the war zone. There are millions without electricity, heat and water in the cold night of suffering and resilience. There is ready support from friends and strangers - and occasional looting in the deserted areas. It also happened to be Halloween, two days after the hurricane, and the trick-or-treating was in full swing in the neighborhoods that didn't lose power. In the evening, the little kids in ridiculously cute costumes occupied the streets and extorted candy from the tired shopkeepers. An adult dressed as the marijuana leaf waved politely and smiled. What a journey. I'd like to write more about it but the book files have to be submitted to the publisher this week. Leafing through the pages, you can see that the collection has some songs but no music. Where is the music? There are live performances, a few online links and CDs. Words and music is another kind of bilingual. This was 2 years ago. New disruptions and tragedies preoccupy us today - particularly, events in my native Ukraine. These are the lines from the English poem on the front cover:His country made the news. It's been a whilesince other nations noticed its existence. But the topics of the book are diverse. They include life, love, family, work, play, art, music, poetry, nature, science, history, geography, migration, education, faith, politics... many modern concerns as well as everlasting thoughts and emotions.Lines from the English poem on the back cover:Attraction feeds attraction,desire breeds desire,and action follows action, a spark igniting fire.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: Russian
• ISBN: 1497383919
• ISBN13: 9781497383913
• Release Date: April 2014
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Weight: 0.56 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.3" x 6.0"