Natalie Lyalin’s second book of poems concerns itself with the process of geographic and familial dislocation. The poems move from village to city to a window from which the speaker witnesses brief atrocities and occasional delights: A peasant starts a revolution; a neighbor abuses his wife. Space and time are folded and refolded, and time travel is possible. Generations are gathered across oceans and continents. Their stories are braided together, slightly exalted, somewhat mourned in a kind of melancholia. Lyalin attempts a beautification of brutality that is only possible in retrospect.
Eastern European Poets Series #34.
Natalie Lyalin’s second book of poems concerns itself with the process of geographic and familial dislocation. The poems move from village to city to a window from which the speaker witnesses brief atrocities and occasional delights: A peasant starts a revolution; a neighbor abuses his wife. Space and time are folded and refolded, and time travel is possible. Generations are gathered across oceans and continents. Their stories are braided together, slightly exalted, somewhat mourned in a kind of melancholia. Lyalin attempts a beautification of brutality that is only possible in retrospect.
Eastern European Poets Series #34.
