The Voice Over: Poems and Essays (Paperback)

Preface
Bibliographic Note
Introduction. “Speaking in Voices”: On Maria Stepanova’s Literary Creation, by Irina Shevelenko
Part I: The Here-World
From On Twins
A Gypski, a Polsk I, a Jewski, a Russki
The North of sleep. Head’s in a pillow cradle
From The Here-World
Ahoy! Beyond the azure’s tempest
Adieu, until one branched floor higher
For you, but the voice of the straitened Muse
From Songs of the Northern Southerners
The Bride
The Pilot
From Happiness
The morning sun arises in the morning
As Danae, prone in the incarce-chamber
It is certainly time to stop
Even bluer than the toilet tiles
(a birthday on the train)
(half an hour on foot)
From Physiology and Private History
July 3rd, 2004
1. I’ll now make a couple of
2. Doctors, lectors and actors, young widows
The Women’s Locker Room at “Planet Fitness”
Sarah on the Barricades
1. The year nineteen-oh-five
2. Of all those lying in the earth, foreheads tossed back
The Desire to Be a Rib
1. Me and myself, we’re uneasy, like a lady with her pitbull
2. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Bus Stop: Israelitischer Friedhof
From O
Zoo, Woman, Monkey
Part II: Displaced Person
From The Lyric, the Voice
And a vo-vo-voice arose
In the festive sky, impassivable, tinfurled
Saturday and Sunday burn like stars
In every little park, in every little square
From Kireevsky
From the cycle Young Maids Sing
Translator’s Note by Eugene Ostashevsky
Mom-pop didn’t know him
Mama, what janitor
A train rides down entire Russia
Ordnance was weeping in the open
The A went past, Tram-Traum
Well I don’t sing Kupitye papirosn
From the cycle Kireevsky
The light swells and pulses at the garden gate
In the village, in the field, in the forest
A deer, a deer stood in that place
The last songs are assembling
From the cycle Underground Pathephone
My dear, my little Liberty
There he lies in his new bed, a band of paper round his head
Don’t wait for us, my darling
Don’t strain your sight
Four Operas
1. Carmen
2. Aida
3. Fidelio
4. Iphigenia in Aulis
Essays
In Unheard-of Simplicity
Displaced Person
Part III: Spolia
Spolia
War of the Beasts and the Animals
Translator’s Note by Sasha Dugdale
War of the Beasts and the Animals
Essays
Today Before Yesterday (excerpt)
After the Dead Water
Intending to Live
At the Door of a Notnew Age
Part IV: Over Venerable Graves
Essays
The Maximum Cost of Living (Marina Tsvetaeva)
Conversations in the Realm of the Dead (Lyubov Shaporina)
What Alice Found There (Alisa Poret)
The Last Hero (Susan Sontag)
From That Side: Notes on Sebald
Over Venerable Graves
Notes