Still City: Poems

Debuting in English following two collections in her first language, Ukrainian American poet and translator Maksymchuk takes readers to a country at war, a country, she reminds that has “bled / for a decade.” The ominous first poems anticipate a possible Russian invasion. “We’re squandering time / awaiting the war,” she observes; she reorganizes her books and waltzes aimlessly with the cat while she joins family and friends in frantically Googling troop buildups at the border even as “phones / [are] humming & lighting up / with a refrain // Are they here yet??” In language disarming in its simplicity, with a conversational feel as if she were speaking extemporaneously, the poet effectively communicates the unreality of the idea that there could be war “in this city with / cobblestone streets, glowing stars / in the windows.” But the bargaining for survival has already begun with her promise to “burn each day / in a celebration / I’ll be fearless and defiant.” Then the grim reality of war arrives: “A home turned inside out—not a skeleton, but a pile of rubble… / A body turned inside out is a spectacle / resembling a bag spilling its private content.” And of course there is no ending.