The poet knows how to speak openheartedly.
Vera Pavlova, poet, beloved by many. She left Moscow immediately after the start of the war, “for fear of choking on the bloody air.” From the very first days of the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine, she wrote poems as reports and posted them on Facebook immediately. She talks about how she has changed, how her craft has changed and how she understands her mission today: “I am a mourner now.”
00:00 Vera Pavlova talks about herself
00:47 About how I learned about the war, thoughts and feelings then
03:08 Was there a premonition of war?
03:29 Why did you leave Russia?
04:02 After February 24, the theme of your poems changed. Has your audience changed?
05:34 Can you say that you yourself have changed over these last year and a half?
08:06 What do you think is the mission of your poems now?
10:13 Can people who left influence those who remained in Russia and continue to believe propaganda?
11:16 Why the book “Line of Contact” combines pre-war and wartime poems
15:22 Is it possible to get used to war?
16:36 You came to the SlovoNovo forum for the fourth time. Why do you think it is important for a free Russia?
17:57 Do you believe in the beautiful Russia of the future? That Russians can be changed?
19:36 What are you most afraid of?
19:52 Will you return to Russia if something changes?
Vera Pavlova is the author of fifteen collections of poetry and she wrote librettos for five operas and four cantatas. This is her first collection in English.
Her poems have been translated into twenty-one languages, and she has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the Apollon Grigoriev Grand Prize (2001).
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 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.
Poems1
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
Footnotes
- Poems – reprinted from Amazon sample or her work ↩︎