{"id":276696,"date":"2010-02-22T16:18:47","date_gmt":"2010-02-22T16:18:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2010\/02\/22\/the-russian-version-by-elena-fanailova-btba-2010-poetry-finalists\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T14:39:39","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T14:39:39","slug":"the-russian-version-by-elena-fanailova-btba-2010-poetry-finalists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2010\/02\/22\/the-russian-version-by-elena-fanailova-btba-2010-poetry-finalists\/","title":{"rendered":""The Russian Version" by Elena Fanailova [BTBA 2010 Poetry Finalists]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the next ten days, we’ll be featuring each of the ten titles from this year’s Best Translated Book Award poetry shortlist.<\/a> Click here<\/a> for all past write-ups.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

The Russian Version<\/em> by Elena Fanailova. Translated from the Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler. (Russia, Ugly Duckling Presse)<\/b><\/p>\n

For the poetry finalists, each of the five judges is writing about two books. Idra Novey—poet, translator, executive director of the Center for Literary Translation at Columbia University—is up first.<\/i> <\/p>\n

The Russian Version<\/em> obliterates the stereotype of what Great Russian Poetry should sound like. Fanailova has the candor and compassion of Akhmatova and a gift for striking metaphor that might bring Mandelstam to mind, but she is also ruthlessly quick to fire \u201cfrom the hip,\u201d as she says in the title poem, and her aim is impeccable. In the ironic poem \u201c(The Italics are Mine),\u201d she writes: <\/p>\n

\n

In the era when poetry flowed
\nFrom human shortcoming,
\nWhen poetry was waiting
\nFor dry remainders,
\nIt did its best, I beg your pardon,
\nLike a hysterical bitch . . .<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

All of the poems in The Russian Version<\/em> veer off in delightfully unexpected directions like this. What begins in sweeping historical statement often turns to sly aside or to some in-your-face metaphor. Turovskaya and Sandler do a superb job of keeping these shifts in tone in Fanailova\u2019s poems palpable and surprising. Throughout the book, the voice in these translations are as lively and distinctive as in any poetry currently being written in the US, if not more so. To the credit of both Fanailova and her translators, the poems consistently come across as both alluringly raw and carefully honed. \u201cNow you can say what you actually think,\u201d Fanailova writes in \u201cThe Queer\u2019s Girldfriend, \u201cand not what Great Russan Poetry demands.\u201d <\/p>\n

Instead of striving for Great Russian Poetry, Fanailova tells of a \u201ctired Petersburg,\u201d a grandmother who sets an apple tree on fire and has the stained dress of a \u201cperpetually slovenly cook.\u201d In an excerpt from her 2002 collection Transylvania Calling<\/em>, she writes of a woman off to an abortion clinic \u201clike a soldier marching the familiar march\u201d and in the next line of soldiers \u201cfucking beautiful Uzbek girls\/unbraiding bridles with their tongues.\u201d Powerful juxtapositions like these, of a tired city and a tree on fire, or of a woman marching like a soldier and soldiers marching over women, crop up throughout the poems. Fanailova, never takes these moments too far or editorializes unnecessarily. Like the scars of the married couples she describes in the same poem, she lets her lines \u201cspeak for themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

A well-placed silence is key to the craft of poetry and Fanailova is a master of such silences. In a poem earlier in the collection, she writes:<\/p>\n

\n

I love to keep silent,
\nAnd to guard the thin-walled, fragile things
\nI save in cigarette papers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the selections contained in this book, spanning nearly twenty years of work, Fanailova knows just when to quietly roll up a poem in cigarette paper and when to let it unfurl. Her version of Russia is one told through a \u201cgrease-paint made of crystals\u201d and the result is mesmerizing. <\/p>\n

\n<\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the next ten days, we’ll be featuring each of the ten titles from this year’s Best Translated Book Award poetry shortlist. Click here for all past write-ups. The Russian Version by Elena Fanailova. Translated from the Russian by Genya Turovskaya and Stephanie Sandler. (Russia, Ugly Duckling Presse) For the poetry finalists, each of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[29976,30836,11976,28926,10576,4636,30826,30846,28616],"class_list":["post-276696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba-2010","tag-elena-fanailova","tag-genya-turovskaya","tag-idra-novey","tag-poetry","tag-russian-literature","tag-russian-version","tag-stephanie-sandler","tag-ugly-duckling-presse"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=276696"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276696\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334666,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/276696\/revisions\/334666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=276696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=276696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=276696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}