Vera Pavlova was born in Moscow. She is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, four opera librettos, and numerous essays on musicology. Her work has been translated into eighteen languages. She is the recipient of several awards and is one of the best-selling poets in Russia.Steven Seymour is a professional interpreter and translator of Russian, Polish, and French. His English translations of Vera Pavlova’s poems have appeared in Tin House and The New Yorker.
7
If there is something to desire,
there will be something to regret.
If there is something to regret,
there will be something to recall.
If there is something to recall,
there was nothing to regret.
If there was nothing to regret,
there was nothing to desire.
9
I broke your heart.
Now barefoot I tread
on shards.
11
Let us touch each other
while we still have hands,
palms, forearms, elbows . . .
Let us love each other for misery,
let us torture each other,
mangle, maim,
to remember better,
to part with less pain.
16
Whose face and body would I like to have?
The face and body of Nike.
I would fly past all those Venuses,
would have nothing to do with Apollos.
With the wind chilling my shoulder
I would leave behind forever
the hall of plaster copies!
71
Self-Portrait in Profile
I
am
the one
who wakes up
on your
left.
76
Am I lovely? Of course!
Breathlessly I taste
the subtle compliment
of a handmade caress.
Chop me into tiny bits,
caress and tame my soul,
that godly swallow
you love to no end.
78
Basked in the sun,
listened to birds,
licked off raindrops,
and only in flight
the leaf saw the tree
and grasped
what it had been.
91
dropped
and falling
from such
heights
for so
long
that
maybe
I will have
enough time
to learn
flying
I broke your heart. / Now barefoot I tread / on shards.
Such is the elegant simplicity—a whole poem in ten words, vibrating with image and emotion—of the best-selling Russian poet Vera Pavlova. The one hundred poems in this book, her first full-length volume in English, all have the same salty immediacy, as if spoken by a woman who feels that, as the title poem concludes, “If there was nothing to regret, / there was nothing to desire.”
Pavlova’s economy and directness make her delightfully accessible to us in all of the widely ranging topics she covers here: love, both sexual and the love that reaches beyond sex; motherhood; the memories of childhood that continue to feed us; our lives as passionate souls abroad in the world and the fullness of experience that entails. Expertly translated by her husband, Steven Seymour, Pavlova’s poems are highly disciplined miniatures, exhorting us without hesitation: “Enough painkilling, heal. / Enough cajoling, command.”
It is a great pleasure to discover a new Russian poet—one who storms our hearts with pure talent and a seemingly effortless gift for shaping poems.
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Distributor: Random House, Inc.
Publication Date: 01-19-2010
Pages: 128
Measurements: 8.33in X 5.37in X .61in X .5625lb
