If There is Something to Desire: One Hundred PoemsI broke your heart. / Now barefoot I tread / on shards. Such is the elegant simplicity—a whole poem in ten words, vibrating with image and emotion—of the best-selling Russian poet Vera Pavlova. The one hundred poems in this book, her first full-length volume in English, all have the same salty immediacy, as if spoken by a woman who feels that, as the title poem concludes, “If there was nothing to regret, / there was nothing to desire.” Pavlova’s economy and directness make her delightfully accessible to us in all of the widely ranging topics she covers here: love, both sexual and the love that reaches beyond sex; motherhood; the memories of childhood that continue to feed us; our lives as passionate souls abroad in the world and the fullness of experience that entails. Expertly translated by her husband, Steven Seymour, Pavlova’s poems are highly disciplined miniatures, exhorting us without hesitation: “Enough painkilling, heal. / Enough cajoling, command.” It is a great pleasure to discover a new Russian poet—one who storms our hearts with pure talent and a seemingly effortless gift for shaping poems. |
Contents
| 9 | |
Do you know what you lacked | 17 |
Whose face and body would I like to have | 18 |
Why is the word yes so brief | 19 |
Sing me The Song of Songs | 20 |
A girl sleeps as if | 21 |
One Touch in Seven Octaves | 22 |
The first kiss in the morning | 25 |
A weight on my back | 56 |
Armpits smell of linden blossom | 57 |
Man to woman is homeland 55 56 57 | 58 |
Memory keeps nothing unnecessary | 59 |
Envy not singers and mimes 18 59 | 60 |
the parrot and its mirror | 61 |
The serenade of a car siren | 62 |
Writing down verses I got | 63 |
Enough painkilling heal | 26 |
Mom was an axiom | 27 |
Why do I recite my poems by heart | 28 |
I was four | 29 |
Those who are asleep in the earth | 30 |
neither dead nor alive | 31 |
He gave me life as a gift | 32 |
The two are in love and happy | 33 |
Sprawling | 34 |
do not fall asleep | 35 |
The hush of the combat zone | 36 |
Lay down | 37 |
Sex the sign language of the deaf and mute | 44 |
When the very last grief | 50 |
A Draft of a Marriage Contract | 55 |
Teeth dull veins collapsed | 64 |
Bathe me birth me from foam | 65 |
You are my dear | 66 |
A tentative bio | 67 |
I walk the tightrope | 68 |
Old age will come will arrange books | 69 |
A Remedy for Insomnia | 70 |
Eyes of mine | 71 |
A cake of soap a length of rope | 72 |
The sleeping are no mates for the crying | 73 |
A caress over the threshold | 79 |
Cannot look at you when | 93 |
Spinner do not hesitate | 99 |
The voice The handwriting The gait | 105 |
Other editions - View all
If There is Something to Desire: One Hundred Poems Vera Anatolʹevna Pavlova No preview available - 2010 |
Common terms and phrases
Armpits smell arms baby barefoot beauty bellies blood breast-fed know Caledonia caress cheek child clavicles closer comes cradle crying crying?—No dark dawn dead death Desire dreams drinking binge dump Embraced entwined face and body feel fireflies flailing his legs flesh forearm free to live fuzzy Grandma's bed hair Half past heart hell hence free Immortal Inseparable keep kiss know the word last grief Let us touch linden blossom look maternity ward Memory Milky mother mute night pain let palms Pavlova piano pillow poems poet Poetry Pulled ravish regret room next door rubbing Russian scary Seven Octaves shard shirt shiver shoulders sing skin smell of linden soul is light stay Steven Seymour surface swallow tears tender Tin House tiny tongue Touch in Seven translator Valentina Polukhina Vera Pavlova wedding gown winter woman sleeps Wrinkles York City Yorker You're crying?—No