Still city Poems

"Stay little, poem / fine and sharp like a charm," writes Ukrainian American poet Maksymchuk. These lines underscore what she accomplishes in her English-language debut, a work of spare, lyric reflections that illuminate the experience of war with surprising impact and universality. Maksymchuk offers the language of war--land mines, bombs, missiles, and human remains--with powerful precision to describe the war in Ukraine while drawing the reader in closely and offering images that cannot be brushed aside. "When a shell strikes a person / there's a scattering // resembling a flock of birds / taking off". Woven with timely references to social media, online shopping, and holiday celebrations, this is a diaristic journey of living through devastation that offers a "gradual shrinking of the present," a relevance that can be felt even by those far removed from war. Although these are vignettes of a specific time and place, they are also visually striking and stand on the page like gestures of grief, with the white space resonating with all that can never be fully expressed.

Debuting in English following two collections in her first language, Ukrainian American poet and translator Maksymchuk takes readers to a country at war, a country, she reminds that has "bled / for a decade." The ominous first poems anticipate a possible Russian invasion. "We're squandering time / awaiting the war," she observes; she reorganizes her books and waltzes aimlessly with the cat while she joins family and friends in frantically Googling troop buildups at the border even as "phones / [are] humming & lighting up / with a refrain // Are they here yet?" In language disarming in its simplicity, with a conversational feel as if she were speaking extemporaneously, the poet effectively communicates the unreality of the idea that there could be war "in this city with / cobblestone streets, glowing stars / in the windows." But the bargaining for survival has already begun with her promise to "burn each day / in a celebration / I'll be fearless and defiant." Then the grim reality of war arrives: "A home turned inside out--not a skeleton, but a pile of rubble… / A body turned inside out is a spectacle / resembling a bag spilling its private content." And of course there is no ending. VERDICT A beautifully articulated expression of war's ongoing impact.