On the Slaughter by Hayim Nahman Bialik and translated by Peter Cole

This is poetry from Ukraine.

On the Slaughter by Hayim Nahman Bialik translated by Peter Cole is published by New York Review of Books. This is a Book originally written in Hebrew. This was published in 2025.0 and has the ISBN of 9.798896230014E12.

On the Slaughter, by Hayim Nahman Bialik and translated by Peter Cole from Hebrew, brings Ukraine Hebrew-language poetry into English through public grief, historical violence, and the sharpness of lament. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem starts making its own weather. I would read it for slaughter, witness, anger, and the old ethical trouble of singing after catastrophe, not as a fixed lesson about a country or period. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. On the Slaughter belongs in the translated poetry library because it gives the shelf a poem of outrage that does not need to soften itself for the reader.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.