What We Live for, What We Die for – Selected Poems by Сергій Жадан and translated by Bob Holman, Wanda Phipps, Virlana Tkacz

This is poetry from Ukraine.

What We Live for, What We Die for – Selected Poems by Сергій Жадан translated by Bob Holman, Wanda Phipps, Virlana Tkacz is published by Yale University Press. This is a Selected originally written in Ukrainian. This was published in 2019.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780300223361E12.

What We Live for, What We Die for – Selected Poems, by Сергій Жадан, is a Ukrainian poetry collection from Ukraine, translated by Bob Holman, Wanda Phipps, Virlana Tkacz, published by Yale University Press in 2019. It is a Ukrainian selected volume by Serhiy Zhadan, whose poetry moves through punk energy, civic grief, war, and exhausted tenderness. The book’s title is blunt because the historical situation demands bluntness, but the poems keep finding lyric complication inside that pressure. I would not approach it as a book that needs to be solved before it can be felt. Start with the pressure of the title, the texture of the translated line, and the feeling of a voice making room for itself in English. For this library, the book matters as more than a record of Ukraine; it is an invitation to let poetry remain particular, difficult, and alive without asking it to behave like explanation.

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.