Letters of the Alphabet Go to War - (Quarternote) by Lesyk Panasiuk (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

The latest installment in the Sarabande Quarternote Chapbook Series.

In this chapbook, Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky offer a translation of Lesyk Panasiuk's remarkable account of living in Bucha, Ukraine, during the apex of war and brutality at the hands of the Russian military. The result is a tremendous work that The Guardian describes as embodying "the idea of the rupture of language through the physical collapse of signs and lettering on buildings hit by missiles." This slim book bears great weight.

Review Quotes

"Lesyk Panasiuk's chilling In the Hospital Rooms of My Country, in a tense, crackling translation by Kaminsky and Katie Farris, observes a language passing through extreme violence: 'The language in a time of war / can't be understood. Inside this sentence / is a hole--no one wants to die--no one / speaks.'"
--Uilleam Blacker, The Times Literary Supplement

"If war involves a fracturing of language, it is poetry that will eventually creep in to fill the gaps... Lesyk Panasiuk has produced poetry that embodies the idea of the rupture of language through the physical collapse of signs and lettering on buildings hit by missiles."
--Charlotte Higgins, The Guardian

"'Letters of the alphabet go to war, ' Lesyk Panasiuk reports; in the Ukrainian alphabet, he finds a beloved graphic landscape and a perilous materiality: 'Through the broken window of / the letter д other countries watch how the letter i / loses its head, how the roof of the letter м / falls through.'"
--Christopher Spade, Poetry Foundation

About the Author

Lesyk Panasiuk is the author of three collections of poetry. His work has been translated into 24 languages, published in Ukrainian and foreign magazines and anthologies, set to music, and used within theater productions, performances and exhibitions worldwide. Panasiuk is a fellow of the Stipend of President of Ukraine (Ukraine, 2019), International Writers' and Translators' House (Ventspils, Latvia, 2019), House of Europe (Ukraine, 2019), Staromiejski Dom Kultury (Poland, 2021), Taras Shevchenko Scientific Society (USA, 2022), Dartmouth College (USA, 2022), Literary Colloquium Berlin (Germany, 2022), and PEN Ukraine (Ukraine, 2023).

Katie Farris is the author of the memoir-in-poems, Standing in the Forest of Being Alive from Alice James Books (US) and Liverpool University Press (UK), which was listed as one of Publishers Weekly's "Top 10 Poetry Books for 2023." Most recently she was the winner of the Pushcart Prize. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, and Poetry, and has been commissioned by MoMA. She is the co-translator of several books of poetry from the Ukrainian, French, Chinese, and Russian.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translator of many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). His work won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, among other honors.