Irina Mashinski
I’m pleased to introduce our November poet, a bilingual poet and translator who emigrated from the former Soviet Unionin 1991. Irina Mashinski has authored seven books of poetry in Russian. Her most recent collections are Volk (Wolf) (Moscow: NLO, 2009) and Raznochinets pervyi sneg I drugie stikhotvoreniia (Raznochinets First Snow and Other Poems) (New York: Stosvet Press, 2009). Her work has also appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including Poetry International, Fulcrum, Zeek, The London Magazine, and An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2005). She is the co-editor, (with Robert Chandler), of the forthcoming Anthology of Russian Poetry from Pushkin to Brodsky (Penguin, 2014), as well as co-founder, ( with her late husband, Oleg Woolf), and co-editor, ( with Robert Chandler and Oleg Woolf), of Cardinal Points, a literary journal published in theU.S. in English and Russian. The winner of several literary awards, including the Russian America (2001) and Maximilian Voloshin (2003), her poetry has been translated into English, French, Italian, Spanish and Serbian. Her book, Poems (2001) was nominated for the Appolon Grigoriev Award, one of the biggest in Russia.
Here are three new, as yet unpublished poems by Irina Mashinski.
Irene Willis
Poetry Editor
The Room
The room started at sunset
endless sadness
bright sunlight on the walls
white empty smell of warm paint
the diamonds the circles of glare
She entered through the tunnel of swirling sun-dust
stared
then she left and returned with a freshly sanded wooden board
and it became the table
she left and then came back with a sheet of table cloth color of snow caps
the curtains which became visible when breeze sent them sail
folding cot
woolen Latvian plaid
she left and returned carrying cautiously
alcohol lamp on the shaky stand
left the room and didn’t come back for a while
then appeared
with a straw basket with someone ‘s apple in it
left and immediately returned with some pears
old German camera
napkin with someone’s debts summed and crossed over
and she sat down and looked at
the wicker hamper with towels wet from the morning swim
blue vase daisies with crumbling centers and smelling already like chamomile tea
white plaster stove with a diamond of low sun, the copper wash-basin with a dent
a jug
a striped summer dress
thrown over the bent back
and a straw hat “Death inVenice”
piece of ryeNormandybread
simple white plate
and she saw
the universe was complete
it was good –
ready
for an
explosion
Before Dawn
a bird of glass,
a bird with a scratched throat,
a bird that tries to tell it all at once,
a bird that turns its head when called,
a bird that’s pinned with hopes,
a bird O Woe,
a bird that must be turned up louder,
a tip-toed bird,
a bird that types,
a bird that strikes a match.
Sheets
Our shoulder blades have become
oars of fire, rowing back.
Unwrinkled linen sheets are floes of ice
my hips slip down.
Brown is the twilight of my room,
owls stare from their dark pouches –
as if my parents were here with me,
sleeping across the room at arms’ length.
A boat is hidden behind the curtain
and I am biting on the strings of my childhood night gown —
gnaw at the wet satin knot,
before you know it
boat will come untied.