Poem Reading: "the meaning of winter changes" by Serhiy Zhadan

You can purchase How Fire Descends by Serhiy Zhadan tr. by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps here.

How Fire Descends by Serhiy Zhadan tr. by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps, and the poem "The Meaning of Winter Changes."

These poems within How Fire Descends are at once spiritual, pleading, stark, and hopeful. They speak of literature and the state and purpose of poems alongside family alongside survival. Zhadan is a tremendous poet, and I believe the reality he manages to versify is both vitally necessary and one full with the signs and images of suffering that Ukraine has endured for so many years.

I offer this additional writing summarily, as I found the review wonderful. From Nicole Yurcaba and Tupelo Quarterly:

How Fire Descends: New and Selected Poems allows English-speaking readers to access a new Ukraine, one fortified in resistance and defiance. Nonetheless, its poems explore pain and bravery, national identity, and daily life in a way only Zhadan has mastered. The simplicity of its language and forms are searingly deceptive and urgent, and each poem is a reckoning with Ukraine’s violent past and present.