Dancing in Odessa

by Ilya Kaminsky

Overview

Poetry. Winner of the 2002 Dorset Prize, and recipient of the Ruth Lilly Fellowship, Ilya Kaminsky is a recent Russian immigrant and rising poetic star. Despite the fact that he is a non-native speaker, Kaminksy's sense of rhythm and lyic surpasses that of most contemporary poets in the English language. This magical, musical book of poems draws readers into its unforgettable heart, and Carolyn Forché wrties simply "I'm in awe of his gifts."

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781932195125
Publisher:	Tupelo Press
Publication date:	04/15/2004
Pages:	58
Product dimensions:	(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.25(d)

About the Author

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government.
Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) won the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine. Dancing In Odessa was also named Best Poetry Book of the Year 2004 by ForeWord Magazine. In 2008, Kaminsky was awarded Lannan Foundation's Literary Fellowship.
In 2009, poems from his new manuscript, Deaf Republic, were awarded Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize. Currently, he teaches Contemporary World Poetry, Creative Writing, and Literary Translation in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at San Diego State University.

Table of Contents

	Author's Prayer	1
	Dancing In Odessa	3
	Musica Humana	15
	Natalia	29
	Traveling Musicians	37
	Praise	51

Editorial Reviews

Born in Odessa, Kaminsky came to this country in 1993 at the age of 15 when his family was granted asylum by the U.S. government. At the start of his impressive debut (which he wrote in English), he reveals an astounding truth: "My secret: at the age of four I became deaf. When I lost my hearing, I began to see voices." With a buoyant, tragicomic vision, the poet depicts a frenetic, anti-Semitic Russia where people dance on the surfaces of grief, as in a Chagall painting: "naked in her galoshes she waltzed/ and even her cat waltzed./ She said: All that is musical in us is memory' but I did not know English, I danced/ sitting down." Other notable dancers are Kaminsky's mother, his Aunt Rose, and his grandmother, alongside the tortured poets of modern Russia, including Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Joseph Brodsky. Rooted in Russian symbolism, Kaminsky's language is at once rich and simple: "We lived north of the future, days opened/ letters with a child's signature, a raspberry, a page of sky." His poems move through the lives of others, known and unknown, connecting the sweet and bitter stories of lost worlds. For all collections of contemporary poetry. E.M. Kaufman, Dewey Ballantine LLP Law Lib., New York Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

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