The Score of the Game

by Tatiana Shcherbina

Overview

Shcherbina emerged in the early 1980s as the spokesperson for the new, independent Moscow culture. Her work was first published in the official press of the Soviet Union in 1986, and five volumes of her poetry were published in samizdat prior to 1990. Her poetry is now widely published in both established and experimental journals at home and abroad, and has been translated into Dutch, German, French, and English. Shcherbina’s poetry blends the personal with the political, and the source for her material is pulled from classical literature, as well as French and German cultural influences.

"Still-Life"

Zing—Boom—Snap:
drop here and there drop
the seed senses the ground like a greedy trap.
Whether it needs to fall, it needs to stay put
as the uttermost prophetic white grasslet in the air
and kafka, with golden inks a crazy engraver
writes: "The seed succeeded, conceived immaculate."

The seed Zing—Snap—Boom:
sets out at random
either toward this mother or that mother
or swimming orphaned toward a leeside cutter:
hurrah, an oasis! hurrah, an oasis!
And all of it a mess!

Snap—Boom—Zing:
my mother's a sun descended from yellow melons,
father a boomerang of moons a lunar elk,
between them a euclidean parallel:
il mirroring il, elle mirroring elle.

The seed, mothlike, like trout knocks knocks against the lantern's light
locked behind a glass door…
Still-life: pitch dark on market day.

Tatiana Shcherbina Shcherbina was awarded a Bourse de Création from the French Ministry of Culture. After living abroad for several years in the early 1990s, she returned to Moscow, where she has served as editor-in-chief of the cultural journal Estet (Aesthete) since 1995.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780939010738
Publisher:	Zephyr Press
Publication date:	05/01/2003
Series:	In the Grip of Strange Thoughts
Edition description:	Bilingual
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 7.50(h) x 0.30(d)

Table of Contents

	Null Null
	Foreword	3
	Concerning the Limits	4
	The Stepmother	6
	Null Null	10
	Women's Theatre	20
	Eros Poesis	26
	Unchopinesque Etude	30
	My ideological antagonist	32
	It was so nauseatingly sick, I broke whatever I could	34
	No need for bullets, the heart explodes on its own	36
	Frequent, willing laundering has leached all color	38
	Zoomorphic Elegy	40
	Always summer in July, in July it's always green	44
	Easter Koan	46
	Strawberry Froth	50
	Pre(ter)	54
	Sappho and Alcaeus	58
	The Thousandth Anniversary of the Christianization of Rus	60
	Letter to a Contemporary	62
	No Smoking!	66
	I don't know, I just don't know about	70
	Not heads not tails--this means right on edge	72
	Christmas Koan	74
	Selected Poems
	Icarus	80
	The Mermaid	82
	Tallus	84
	Still-Life	86
	What does an Apache feel in the other world	88
	The Poet and The Tsar	90
	Video	94
	The whole city seductively lit up	96
	And to eat fish, spit out the bones--there's happiness for you	98
	Ballad of the Schliersee	100
	Poetry, farewell, farewell	102
	I am slain by the impotence	104
	They say if longing gnaws at you, change	106
	Hope is not the very last to die	108
	Life Without You	110
	The Marathon	112
	Black Orchid	114
	No News	116
	I who go away am not I who draw near	118
	Circulatory Traffic	120
	Notes	123