BOOK NOTES: Poetry by Abram Katsnelson published in retrospective edition (07/10/05)

BOOK NOTES

Poetry by Abram Katsnelson published in retrospective edition

"Liryka" by Abram Katsnelson. Kyiv: Astarta, 2002. 367 pp. port. ISBN 966-523-170-7.

by Marta Tarnawsky

Abram Katsnelson came to America when he was already 80 years old and had an established reputation as a well- known Ukrainian poet and a teacher of aspiring young poets.

Born in 1914 in Horodnia, Ukraine, and educated at the University of Kyiv, Mr. Katsnelson was already the author of some 20 books - poetry collections as well as books of literary theory and criticism. Even at an advanced age and in a new foreign language environment Mr. Katsnelson continues to write Ukrainian poetry. Two collections of his newly written lyrics have been published in Los Angeles in 1996 ("Poklyk Vysoty") and in 1998 ("V Nimbi Syvyny"). The present book "Liryka," published in Kyiv by the author's numerous fans and readers, is a retrospective of lyrical poetry selected from all the earlier Katsnelson books.

Mr. Katsnelson is not a modernist poet; his frame of reference in Ukrainian literature is not Antonych, but Sosiura and Rylskyi. Maksym Rylskyi, in fact, was one of Mr. Katsnelson's revered teachers, and Mr. Katsnelson speaks with pride of being the recipient of the Maksym Rylskyi Prize for achievement in Ukrainian poetry.

Mr. Katsnelson's love and masterly command of the Ukrainian language, his impeccable traditional poetic form, the richness and originality of his rhymes, his preference for laconic miniatures, combined with the sincerity and directness of his lyricism and his optimistic tone, have gained him a considerable following among readers of poetry.

A few of Mr. Katsnelson's poems in Dorian Rottenberg's translation have been included in two English-language anthologies of Ukrainian poetry, i.e. "Anthology of Soviet Ukrainian Poetry," published in Kyiv in 1982 and "Poetry of Soviet Ukraine's New World," published by P. Norbury in England in the UNESCO series in 1986. No translation of a poet as dependent on the beauty of language and traditional form as Mr. Katsnelson can do justice to the original, but at least the readers can gain some insight into the poet's subject matter and his life's philosophy. These anthologies can be found in some American libraries.

Among the translated poems are "Confession (I'm getting greedier and greedier for beauty)" - one of the poet's most effective lyrics which stresses his life's philosophy and his exuberant optimism; "A Ballad About A Globe (The school was closed. In classrooms horses whinnied), a poem about a boy who saved a tiny globe from the rubble of war, that is dedicated to the cosmonaut Popovych; "In Our Villages Steep Obelisks" - a poem about names on war monuments; "I'm Earth (Fair curls peeped from beneath the saucy beret)" - about a girl-radio dispatcher during the war who speaks in code, but symbolically on behalf of the planet earth - a lyric that could have been a propaganda piece but was saved by Mr. Katsnelson's warm humor and sincere lyricism; and "A Maple Leaf On The Asphalt" - a brief and effective statement of Katsnelson's aesthetic philosophy.

Some of the best of Mr. Katsnelson's lyrics are love poems - these, unfortunately, are not available in translation.

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