The Score of the Game

by Shcherbina, Tatiana; Kates, J.

• ISBN13: 9780939010738
• ISBN10: 0939010739
• Edition: Bilingual
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-07-01
• Publisher: Zephyr Pr

Summary

Shcherbina emerged in the early 1980s as the spokesperson for the new, independent Moscow culture. Her work was first published in the official press of the Soviet Union in 1986, and five volumes of her poetry were published in samizdat prior to 1990. Her poetry is now widely published in both established and experimental journals at home and abroad, and has been translated into Dutch, German, French, and English. Shcherbina's poetry blends the personal with the political, and the source for her material is pulled from classical literature, as well as French and German cultural influences. "Still-Life" Zing-Boom-Snap: drop here and there drop the seed senses the ground like a greedy trap. Whether it needs to fall, it needs to stay put as the uttermost prophetic white grasslet in the air and kafka, with golden inks a crazy engraver writes: "The seed succeeded, conceived immaculate." The seed Zing-Snap-Boom: sets out at random either toward this mother or that mother or swimming orphaned toward a leeside cutter: hurrah, an oasis! hurrah, an oasis! And all of it a mess! Snap-Boom-Zing: my mother's a sun descended from yellow melons, father a boomerang of moons a lunar elk, between them a euclidean parallel: il mirroring il, elle mirroring elle. The seed, mothlike, like trout knocks knocks against the lantern's light locked behind a glass doora_ Still-life: pitch dark on market day. Tatiana Shcherbina Shcherbina was awarded a Bourse de Creation from the French Ministry of Culture. After living abroad for several years in the early 1990s, she returned to Moscow, where she has served as editor-in-chief of the cultural journal Estet (Aesthete) since 1995.

Author Biography

Tatiana Shcherbina was awarded a Bourse de Creation from the French Ministry of Culture. After living abroad for several years in the early 1990s, she returned to Moscow, where she served as editor-in-chief of the cultural journal Estet (Aesthete), and most recently as an editor for Vestnik Evropy. J. Kates is a poet and literary translator who lives in Fitzwilliam, New Hampshire

Table of Contents

Foreword
Null Null	3	(120)
Concerning the Limits	4	(2)
The Stepmother	6	(4)
Null Null	10	(10)
Women's Theatre	20	(6)
Eros Poesis	26	(4)
Unchopinesque Etude	30	(2)
My ideological antagonist	32	(2)
It was so nauseatingly sick, I broke whatever I could	34	(2)
No need for bullets, the heart explodes on its own	36	(2)
Frequent, willing laundering has leached all color	38	(2)
Zoomorphic Elegy	40	(4)
Always summer in July, in July it's always green	44	(2)
Easter Koan	46	(4)
Strawberry Froth	50	(4)
Pre(ter)	54	(4)
Sappho and Alcaeus	58	(2)
The Thousandth Anniversary of the Christianization of Rus	60	(2)
Letter to a Contemporary	62	(4)
No Smoking!	66	(4)
I don't know, I just don't know about	70	(2)
Not heads not tails --- this means right on edge	72	(2)
Christmas Koan	74	(6)
Selected Poems
Icarus	80	(2)
The Mermaid	82	(2)
Tallus	84	(2)
Still-Life	86	(2)
What does an Apache feel in the other world	88	(2)
The Poet and The Tsar	90	(4)
Video	94	(2)
The whole city seductively lit up	96	(2)
And to eat fish, spit out the bones --- there's happiness for you	98	(2)
Ballad of the Schliersee	100	(2)
Poetry, farewell, farewell	102	(2)
I am slain by the impotence	104	(2)
They say if longing gnaws at you, change	106	(2)
Hope is not the very last to die	108	(2)
Life Without You	110	(2)
The Marathon	112	(2)
Black Orchid	114	(2)
No News	116	(2)
I who go away am not I who draw near	118	(2)
Circulatory Traffic	120	(3)
Notes	123