Song of a Reformed Headhunter

Born in 1976, Polina Barskova is reckoned to be one of the best of the younger generation of Russian poets. Her work has been shortlisted for the Debut and Andrei Bely Prizes. A child prodigy, she began publishing in journals at the age of six, and released the first of her six books when she was 15. Two volumes of her poetry have been translated into English. I found a signed copy of her selected poems THE ZOO IN WINTER while browsing in St. Mark's Bookshop, and bought it on the strength of the opening poems. In THE ZOO IN WINTER, Barskova, an associate professor of Russian literature at Hampshire College, looks to her tremendous native literary tradition. Her poems engage in a very lively manner with canonical writers such as Pushkin, Nabokov, Akhmatova and Brodsky. In the sequence "Pantheon," she riffs off the name of Pushkin by inventing poetic lookalikes such as Khlopushkin, Pliushkin and Peshkin. Her engagement with the tradition is at the same time deeply ...

I received my green card in the mail on March 1. GH left two official-looking envelopes on my table. One was a questionnaire to find out my eligibility to undertake jury duty. The other held my permanent residency. Responsibility and privilege come hand-in-hand, they say. I will have to live here for five years before I can apply for citizenship. I don't know yet if I will, since I am reluctant to give up my Singapore citizenship. Neither government encourages dual citizenship, unfortunately. I think I will try to write a poem about dual citizenship sometime. Last night, at the Son of a Pony reading, I shared the good news and the audience responded warmly. Then I read this poem, which I introduced as the other face of becoming a permanent resident in a foreign country. Singapore Buses Are Very Reliable And they told him that in Prague his mother died.             Polina Barskova, “Motherhood and Childhood” ...

This Presidents' Weekend, I read three recent books by three women poets from different countries. Born in Wellington, New Zealand, where she now lives, Diana Bridge is the recipient of the 2010 Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for Poetry for distinguished contribution to New Zealand poetry. Aloe & Other Poems (2009) is her fifth book of poetry. I was turned on to the next poet by a TLS article. Doris Kareva is one of Estonia's leading poets. Shape of Time  collects poems from three previous books. It is translated by Tina Aleman and introduced by Penelope Shuttle. I found a signed copy of Polina Barskova's The Zoo in Winter while browsing in St. Mark's Bookshop and bought it on the strength of the opening poems. She was born in St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, and moved to the States when she was 20. Regarded as a child prodigy, she published her first book of poems at age 15. Bridge is a poet of seeing. A scholar of Chinese culture and Indian art, she write...