Song of a Reformed Headhunter

The Roger Smith Annual Poetry Dinner is held at the Roger Smith Hotel in Midtown East in the spirit of Scottish-American cultural exchange and in honor of a Scottish poet. The poet is usually returning from the Poetry Festival in Nicaragua, as I learned last night from the honored poet Gerrie Fellows. After the opening remarks by organizer Danika Druttman, Gerrie began the dinner by reading her lovely poems. The phrase "the grit and oil of matter" stayed with me. As the dinner continued, every guest read a poem he or she brought. It was to be expected that the Scottish connection would be strong. One of the best poems of the evening was a witty parody of a Scottish ballad. More surprising was the international flavor of the evening. Two poets of Indian heritage read, as well as a woman from Mexico and a man from Peru, the latter two reading in Spanish. There was also a poet of African heritage; she did not say what part of Africa. Sitting across from me, as I discovered lat...

Born in 1976, Polina Barskova is reckoned to be one of the best of the younger generation of Russian poets. Her work has been shortlisted for the Debut and Andrei Bely Prizes. A child prodigy, she began publishing in journals at the age of six, and released the first of her six books when she was 15. Two volumes of her poetry have been translated into English. I found a signed copy of her selected poems THE ZOO IN WINTER while browsing in St. Mark's Bookshop, and bought it on the strength of the opening poems. In THE ZOO IN WINTER, Barskova, an associate professor of Russian literature at Hampshire College, looks to her tremendous native literary tradition. Her poems engage in a very lively manner with canonical writers such as Pushkin, Nabokov, Akhmatova and Brodsky. In the sequence "Pantheon," she riffs off the name of Pushkin by inventing poetic lookalikes such as Khlopushkin, Pliushkin and Peshkin. Her engagement with the tradition is at the same time deeply ...

This Presidents' Weekend, I read three recent books by three women poets from different countries. Born in Wellington, New Zealand, where she now lives, Diana Bridge is the recipient of the 2010 Lauris Edmond Memorial Award for Poetry for distinguished contribution to New Zealand poetry. Aloe & Other Poems (2009) is her fifth book of poetry. I was turned on to the next poet by a TLS article. Doris Kareva is one of Estonia's leading poets. Shape of Time  collects poems from three previous books. It is translated by Tina Aleman and introduced by Penelope Shuttle. I found a signed copy of Polina Barskova's The Zoo in Winter while browsing in St. Mark's Bookshop and bought it on the strength of the opening poems. She was born in St. Petersburg, then known as Leningrad, and moved to the States when she was 20. Regarded as a child prodigy, she published her first book of poems at age 15. Bridge is a poet of seeing. A scholar of Chinese culture and Indian art, she write...