![]() ![]() In the entries, he shares photos, sends encouraging messages, and organizes far-reaching humanitarian drives and fundraisers. What makes Sky Above Kharkiv different from other firsthand war accounts is that Zhadan composed the entries via social media. Intimate and courageous, Zhadan’s latest is a record of the war’s first four months, when volunteers like Zhadan worked tirelessly to evacuate children, protect the elderly, and raise awareness in Western countries about the new reality Russia’s invasion created for Ukrainians. His book Sky Above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front is a testimony to Zhadan and Ukraine’s fortitude. Despite the continuing war in Ukraine and his seemingly round-the-clock volunteer efforts, Zhadan somehow manages to remain a prolific, productive writer. Perhaps no contemporary writer-activist has captured the world’s attention the way Ukrainian poet, novelist, and rock star Serhiy Zhadan has. “Tomorrow we’ll wake up one day closer to victory:” A Review of Serhiy Zhadan’s Sky Above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front by Nicole Yurcaba ![]() The significant parts of their identity, their livelihood, and ultimately their lifestyles are left behind. The fact the individual poems can be identified by their first lines also mirrors how refugees and displaced persons, especially those seeking refuge in foreign countries, are identifiable only by passports and paperwork. It also creates continual fragmentation, and this fragmentation mimics the separation of families, the annexation of a sovereign country’s territories, and the destruction occurring because of ongoing war. The lack of poem titles reinforces the sense of loss, displacement, and departure. Adding to the poems’ mythical tones is the fact that the poems are untitled. Vividly stunning, the collection leaves readers contemplating the meaning of banishment, home, and geographical, even cultural, loss. ![]() Departures, expulsions, and displacements permeate the collection, drawing on Ukraine’s historical importance and complexities and elevating losses, wars, and even abandoned buildings to a universal, yet mythical realm. The eleventh volume in Lost Horse Press’s Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series, Kateryna Kalytko’s Nobody Knows Us Here, and We Don’t Know Anyone processes separation, loss, and drastic personal and social changes while hinting at the ongoing war in Ukraine. Read more >Ī Review of Nobody Knows Us Here, and We Don’t Know Anyone by Kateryna Kalytko by Nicole Yurcaba The whole of this work is truly greater than the sum of its parts and it serves as a rich primer on the state of the world climate in the first quarter of the twentieth century. Epilogues is a hybrid approach, and as such, is not history, not essay, not poetry, while being all three of those at the same time. Hers is the confident voice of a studied naturalist, the rhetoric of a skilled essayist, and the lyric lament of a sensitive and attentive human being. Through her Socratic-styled inquiry, she tackles the inevitability of human diminishment in the story of the earth in an unvarnished realism that seeks to advance thoughtful questions as much as answer them. In this multi-faceted work, a combination of geological history, documentarian essay, and poetic lament, Hurd explores our current eco-status without the taint of either romanticism or hyper-dystopianism. Barbara Hurd, in Epilogues: Afterwords on the Planet provides such an inquiry. In an age of sound bites, reductionist agendas, and oversimplifications, it is refreshing and comforting to see that honest and open-ended inquiry is still possible. _ July 2023 Asking the Big Questions: Barbara Hurd’s Epilogues: Afterwords on the Planet by Andy Ray In the meantime, happy summer, and enjoy! Our new Senior Reviews Editors, Esteban Rodriguez and Linda Michel-Cassidy, will also be assigning a selection of books, bringing an exciting perspective to Tupelo Quarterly’s already vibrant offerings in literary criticism. In the coming months, look for more review-essays, as well as small press features and discussions of new poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and hybrid texts. For the month of July, it’s an honor to feature and celebrate three exciting new books: Epilogues: Afterwords on the Planet by Barbara Hurd, Serhiy Zhadan’s Sky Above Kharkiv: Dispatches from the Ukrainian Front, and Kateryna Kalytko’s Nobody Knows Us Here, and We Don’t Know Anyone. I’m thrilled to introduce three new additions to the Reviews Page at Tupelo Quarterly. ![]()
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