Alcohol and Chinese Cooking

Meet Serhiy Zhadan, the "most popular poet of the post-independence generation in Ukraine."  I attended his poetry reading last night (only his 3rd in the United States) at the Harriman Institute, and, granted I'm a little biased being Ukrainian myself, I'm so glad I did.

To be honest, before coming to the reading I had no idea who he was.  Although I'm Ukrainian, I don't spend extensive time in the Motherland, so I'm not up on my Ukie "who's hot and who's not," and I'm even less up to date on popular contemporary Ukrainian poets (contemporary poets in general aren't #1 on my radar...).  But word on the street (uh, in my Ukrainian class) was that he was going to be awesome, and so I went.

(For those who want a full, comprehensive image on who this guy is: Biography!  And interview!  And a summary of some works!)

He was mad smart.  He was mad funny.  He was smart in a funny way, and funny in a smart way.  As the panelist asked him questions, his responses were not only informative answers, but were also humorous fun facts (when asked who his band, "Dogs in Space," would like to tour with, Gogol Bordello was the answer, and it was said with absolutely no hesitation).

Let's get a little serious, here: his poems are bleak.  They embody the dismal voice of 21st century Ukraine, left traumatized by the culture-depleting influence of the Soviet Union.  He speaks of alcoholism, drug trafficking, and pill-induced suicide.  As he was reading his poetry T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock kept coming to mind -- both Eliot and Zhadan use countless, seemingly unrelated images in a single poem to convey a very specific message.  And as random as the images are, they work, and we understand exactly what the author is trying to say.  Incredible.

But he isn't afraid to shed a little light on his dreary repertoire: a novel of his may involve a gypsy stripper in a gay bar, he wrote a play about Elvis Presley for a pregnant actress, and during an untranslated poem section (untranslated because the rhymes would make zero sense in English), he literally rapped about "300 Chinese going to Budapest."  I never thought Ukrainian slam-poetry-meets-rap would make me a fan of postmodern Ukrainian poetry, but hey, shit happens.

(Zhadan in the midst of some epic rapping.)

I could only find one (translated) poem of his online.  It was the first one he read last night, and it's entitiled Chinese Cooking: 
http://ukraine.poetryinternationalweb.org/piw_cms/cms/cms_module/index.php?obj_id=5644

I also want to include one of my favorite poems of his, entitled Alcohol (translated by Virlana Tkacz and Wanda Phipps):

ALCOHOL

The green river water

slows in warm bends

fish zeppelins

scatter the plankton

and tired bird catchers

attempt to catch

every word.

Hold on to

the brightly colored rags and scotch tape

that bind the slashed wrists

of these heroic times.

One day you will turn off this radio,

you'll get used to her,

to her breathing

and, dressed in your T-shirt,

she'll bring you water in the middle of the night.

On the terrace the left-over cups of tea

are filling up with rain water

and cigarette butts,

you and I share a cold

you and I share long conversations --

you don't notice the morning rain

you go to sleep late

and you wake up late

I write poems about how I love

this woman, and I invent

newer and newer words

to avoid

telling her.

The thing I loved most about him is that he gives a damn.  He gives a damn about what he's feeling, and what others are feeling, and what Ukraine is feeling.  But he doesn't come outright and say "Look, I'm unhappy, and this isn't going as it should."  His emotions, the emotions that are currently gathering an cult-like following and taking Ukraine by storm, come from his current cultural environment, from cigarette butts and gay bars and Chinese cooking.  And that modernity and present-focused viewpoint is what is going to make a difference.  It already is.  

-Lida

P.S.  Again, apologies for the sucky (and slightly creepy) camera phone photos.