Review | The Line - Poems and translations by Vera Pavlova and Andrey Kneller

This is a review of The Line – Poems and Translations, a poetry collection featuring verse by Russian poet Vera Pavlova and Russian-American poet-translator Andrey Kneller.

 The Line features work from one of Russia’s premier poets, Vera Pavlova, alongside original verse from the poet-translator Andrey Kneller who also translates Pavlova’s verse that appears in the books. The Line is a book different from other poetry books. Not only because of its unorthodox format (the book being written as a kind of dialogue between two poets) but because the two poets whose work it contains are themselves unusual. Like I assume many other poets do, I read other poet’s work. Not just those I consider the classics; Akhmatova, Brodsky, Plath etc., but I attempt to also read the work of my contemporary poets – those who are supposed to be writing in the here and the now. In these attempts I have found the poetry to be either numbingly boring or numbingly disturbing in the worst way possible. There is a tendency amongst most published poets in America today to write poems with irregular structure, so irregular it is difficult to read; there is a tendency towards long lines with longer stanzas and poems that take up several pages (the question of whether poets should be paid by the line as they are by some magazines should be asked); a tendency towards the shockingly bad; towards the intensely political and doctrinarian; or towards the grotesquely narcissistic. But enough has been said regarding the bad poetry in magazines and on Barnes and Noble shelves, let us instead take a look at a book which does not fall into any of these categories, a book which in my opinion does not merit disdain, but instead merits something akin to admiration.

 I should note from the onset that I have read many of Andrey Kneller’s translations of Russian poetry – his Akhmatova compilation Final Meeting was my introduction to the Petersburg poet and her modern-day interpreter. I say interpreter not because Kneller has written large scholarly works on Akhmatova the way that Amanda Haight and Roberta Reeder have, but because a good translator is the most necessary interpreter a poet can have. Kneller has also translated many others besides Akhmatova and Pavlova, my review of his Blok translations can be read on the blog, his work also includes the poets Mandelstam and Mayakovsky, among others. 

Kneller’s translations of Pavlova in The Line differ from his other efforts in two ways; for one, the Pavlova book is compiled in a different manner from his other works. Instead of featuring a selection of Pavlova’s poems sitting opposite their original Russian verse, The Line features a selection of Pavlova’s verse sitting opposite a selection of Kneller’s own verse – all of which appears in English (though the Russian originals of Pavlova’s poems may be accessed via QR code printed on each page). For two, The Line is different from Kneller’s other works for the simple reason that it is better than his others. It isn’t to say that Kneller’s earlier works were bad, they are good, they stand as some of the best Russian to English poetic translations around, and I am certain that no other poet-translator has given the English world so many different Russian poets, for quantity’s sake alone we can give Kneller a gold star. But what I mean to say is that Kneller seems to shine especially bright in his translations of Pavlova.  

My only complaint against Kneller, one that has largely been voiced privately, has been that in some of his translations, such as the Blok translations, there are words that do not need to be there. I believe I have said before that, it is my belief that Kneller chops some words out and/or puts new ones into the English because of his attention to the form and style of the original – going so far as to retain rhyme. It is amazing that such attention to formal detail has yielded as good translations as it has, for often such antics are likely to remove a translation too far afield of the original piece. I have little doubt that were Brodsky alive today, he would be thankful for Andrey Kneller’s work as a translator, and we might have the gift of Kneller’s Brodsky translations appearing in print, which today is impossible due to legal reasons, though they can be found online here. But alas, I digress. 

While we don’t get to see Kneller’s attention to form grace Brodsky’s verse in English, we do get to see his translations of Pavlova in print, and with their publication my complaints against Kneller’s translation methods have been mostly laid to rest. Not only does Kneller manage to retain the original form when necessary, but there is hardly a word unnecessary, missing, or out of place in his interpretation of Pavlova. That Vera Pavlova is fortunate to have such a translator as Kneller cannot be stressed enough. One imagines that another less scrupulous translator might have laid waste to the delicate simplicity of Pavlova’s verse, and that the English audience would be alienated from this Russian poet’s work as a whole – for such is the magnitude of translation, good or bad. 

I should also note that this book constitutes my first introduction to Vera Pavlova. Up until this point the newest Russian poetry I had read was probably Brodsky or Voznesensky, but of course even Brodsky and Voznesensky are not ‘new’ anymore. Since the poets of the 60s there have been others in Russia, others each with their own voice, which we imagine is quite distinct from Brodsky’s or Voznesensky’s or from any other poet that came before them. Since it is the Russians we are talking about it is to be expected that these newer poets, those coming after Brodsky and the others, have not disregarded form in the same way their American and British contemporaries have, for to disregard poetic form completely seems to be unthinkable in the Russian tradition. Vera Pavlova is one such Russian poet who can be seen as both representing newer poetry and as being quite unique.

We are told that Pavlova began writing poetry after she had given birth to her first child. This means that she began writing poetry at a slightly later age than some poets. This is not a bad thing, for it also means that she may have avoided some of the pit falls of a young and awkward poet, at least if she did fall into them, we know nothing of it, for it appears at times that Pavlova’s verse arrived on the page fully formed. This aspect of the poet’s biography is interesting, for one because it features heavily in her verse, and for two because it is a somewhat different situation than we might expect a poet to begin writing verse in. We think often of a poet’s early verses as being inspired by the first stirrings of love or perhaps as being brought about by some misfortune experienced at an impressionable time. We don’t often think of the birth of a child as sparking the flame, but for Pavlova it did. 

The scene of her initiation into the realm of poetry is described in the following poem, note the form of the poem and the use of images as you read: 

One more poet into the world arrives,

the moment I observed

the death of death, the life of life – 

the child that I birthed. 

It happened like this, my unveiling: 

the blood made my groin sear,

my soul was spiraling, my baby wailing,

in the arms of the nurse, from fear. 

(VP. Page 84) 

What we have here is a short poem comprised of eight lines. These eight lines are Pavlova’s signature, they are the hallmark of her poetry, and encapsulated within these eight lines is usually a wealth of interesting images and provoking ideas. This is to say that the outward simplicity of Pavlova’s eight lines does not belie complexity and depth of expression – much like Akhmatova, hers is an ‘un-simple simplicity’. Here the image is of a woman in labour, she has delivered her child, and the surreal and traumatic experience has ‘unveiled’ her as a poet. 

The idea of conflating reproduction and poetic creation has been around for quite some time, if not since the beginning of the poetic art. As with most things that have been around a long time, this idea has its detractors – sometimes especially amongst women poets – but it nonetheless remains firmly ensconced in people’s minds. Pavlova’s poem is taking up this theme because it was her experience of things. To Pavlova, the idea of poem-as-child does not present itself as an artful abstraction of the creative process, it is quite literally, her reality. ‘the death of death, the life of life,--’ this line is what the poet observed in the moment of her child’s birth, we are to assume that this experience led to the banishment of death (perhaps, fear?) and to the affirmation of life via the giving of life. This experience constituted her unveiling as a poet.

The image of unveiling speaks to our idea of initiation. In ancient cultures, some today still practice this rite, a bride might be veiled prior to the wedding and unveiled by the groom in a symbolic gesture during the wedding, or after the ceremony has taken place. Keeping in mind that at least within the Hebrew tradition the groom will have seen the bride before her veiling (so as to avoid Jacob’s fate) so it is not some kind of undressing, rather it is symbolic, symbolic of the woman’s entry into married life, which in probably every culture is considered a moment of crossing, from one life into the next. In this case though, the unveiling does not symbolize Pavlova’s crossing into married life so much as it symbolizes her crossing into the poetic life. She has been initiated, by blood no less (‘the blood made my groin sear’), into a new life – the life of a poet. 

Andrey Kneller also has a poem in this collection that makes similar allusions to the poem-as-child and the poetic act-as-reproduction: 

The Muse is authoritarian,

controlling your thought and speech.

Each poem – a birth by cesarean,

with the fetus in breach,

without an anesthetic.

Alone and listless, you lie

and suddenly hear her prophetic,

her firm, life-affirming cry.

(A.K. page 99) 

Interestingly enough this poem does not sit opposite the Pavlova poem above, instead it sits opposite another Pavlova poem (‘A rainbow flashes for a moment…’ ) that also features the theme of poem-as-child. This theme is extensive throughout Pavlova’s work and the poem featured in this review is only one example amongst many. That Kneller has taken up this theme as well, albeit to a lesser degree, should not be too surprising, as the reader will find in his work an attention to motherhood, fatherhood, and the raising of children. This theme of private family life is one of the hallmarks of poetry from the mid-twentieth century onward. It seems to have been somewhat unlikely a theme before then, perhaps Robert Lowell’s honesty played a role in the wider acceptance of a theme once considered more unwritable than the intimate private lives of lovers. 

The poem is of course about the Muse, here she is personified as an in-human being who has a strong and unrelenting grasp on the poet. This expression of the muse as ‘authoritarian, / controlling your thought and speech, /’ reminds one of Akhmatova’s poems about the muse, except that in Akhmatova the muse was anything but connected with motherhood – a condition she found to be very challenging and in no way tantamount to creative impulse and expression – and here is where Kneller leaves what appears as his debt to Akhmatova and enters his own territory more fully. Kneller announces to us that ‘each poem a birth by cesarean/ with the fetus in breech/’ . This differs from other descriptions of poetic-creation-as-birth for according to Kneller the poem is a fetus in breech in need of cesarean. The imagery here is barbaric, perhaps meant to signify the arduous and difficult pains of writing a poem ‘without anesthetic’ though it is a highly dramatic statement.

The highlight of the poem is at the end when Kneller writes ‘Alone and listless, you lie/until you hear her firm life-affirming cry’. The ‘firm life-affirming cry’ is we assume meant to be a play on words, though it risks sounding repetitive, and is there for emphasis. These last few lines give a very acute description of what the attack of the muse is like to the poet. Overall, this is Kneller’s answer to the Muse and to whether or not a poem is a child – to which he answers, much like Pavlova, it is. 

Comparisons to childbirth and babies in cradles are not the only way that Pavlova knows to write about the poetic impulse. The following poem appears to describe some of the difficulties a writer faces: 

I take each blow like an award,

awards – like weights to bear,

I’m searching for the truth before

the last, of which I’m scared.

I’m drained of strength and passion,

but there’s a missing link,

even Rilke had his Russia.

I have no such thing.

(VP. Page 100) 

The opening line of the poem announces that the poet willingly takes ‘each blow like an award’ which one assumes refers to critique and disregard of the poet’s work – something every writer will face at some time, even in Russia, where of all countries, poetry is held in extremely high esteem. There is also the more sinister connotation, that critics and disinterested publishers aren’t the only thing a poet has to contend with, as Mandelstam said, ‘where else does poetry get one killed?’. The challenges a writer will face may vary from place to place, in Russia we know that historically at least, it has the unfortunate side effect of getting oneself killed, whereas in America, many poets go without any acknowledgement of their existence until they are dead, or at least well established – many exceptions of course exist, as they do to all rules. Whichever it is, whether critics, publishers, totalitarian dictators, or utter disregard, these are the conditions a poet lives in and with and it is these which Pavlova’s poem addresses.

The poet goes on to say that she accepts these blows like awards; for sometimes there is no higher compliment than to be hated or disregarded. She announces that she is searching for the truth, that the masses or even a powerful minority may not like this truth is of no concern and is disregarded by the poet. But though we understand that the poet has the ability to live through difficulties, we also understand that she is ‘ drained of strength and passion’, she suffers from a malaise, an ennui, and while “even Rilke had his Russia’ the poet unfortunately ‘has no such thing’. These final lines of course refer to the German poet’s love for Russia and for Russian literature. It was in this culture that he felt he had found some solution or understanding of the discontent and disconnection that many of the Europeans of his time were experiencing – in short, Russia was Rilke’s saving grace from the ills of his own society. It is this kind of saving grace that Pavlova claims to lack in this poem. She is without the comfort that Rilke had. This is made all the more poignant because Russia is her homeland, and yet it belongs less to her than it did to Rilke. She has yet to find the balm that will sooth her dislocation.

The final line of the poem ‘I have no such thing’ rings clearly from the page, because it is so simple that it can only be a sigh of resignation to a seemingly bitter fate – that of disconnection and dislocation – once again, it is in Pavlova’s simplicity that her poetry retains its strength. 

We have so far looked at where the collaboration between the two poets has worked, where each has expressed her own or his own voice on various themes and experiences – so far those experiences regarding the poetic act – with success, but what about those poems in this collection that don’t quite hit the mark in the same way, for if this is to be a fair review I must look at where our poets did not deliver in the way I would have expected. That this is my opinion goes without saying, and if you dislike opinion being passed on artistic matters, I recommend you find something else to read. 

The following poem by Kneller is an example of where the collaborative effort did not work as well as it could have, because the Pavlova poem it is paired to has a remarkably different feeling to it: 

Most tranquil, peaceful scene –

the Virgin and the Child. 

The mother can’t conceal

her Mona Lisa smile.

Her bosom is engorged,

translucent, glowing white,

like windows in a church

that filter morning light.

(AK. Page 83) 

The Pavlova poem it is written next to is as follows: 

These prayers might come across

As lullabies, don’t be fuddled.

I love You, of course, on the cross,

but You’re dearer to me in swaddles,

it is this You I pray to, while pleading,

hosannas and litany raving,

to the sleepy, I pray to the teeny 

infant, abreast, after bathing.

(VP. Page 82) 

It is becoming obvious by now that family life, reproduction, and poetry share an intimate relationship in the poetry of both Kneller and Pavlova, we have seen this done well, and now we see it done not as well – at least as a collaboration. To begin with all honesty, I do not understand Pavlova’s poem – I read her words, but I do not understand them – perhaps it is because I am not a mother, or perhaps there is just something about this poem that I am never going to understand. I see that she communicates her attachment to the infant Jesus, which echoes her attachment to her own child, and I see that it is this infant Christ, this baby at the breast, that she prays to. That it is a poem with many beautifully written and translated lines, is true, particularly ‘it is this You I pray to, while pleading,/ hosannas and litany ravings/. One of the best lines in the book is ‘hosannas and litany ravings’, this is not in dispute, nor is it even Pavlova’s poem that is in dispute, but rather Kneller’s chosen response to the poem, on the next page.

What may be the idea behind the poem, comparing an obviously earthly mother with the Mother of G-d, is an interestingone, and it is similar to Pavlova’s own poem seen above, where she identifies her own infant with the Infant Jesus, but where Kneller’s poem drifts into territory which I find distasteful is in his description of things; namely the lines: ‘/Her bosom is engorged,/ translucent, glowing white,/like windows in a church/ that filter morning light//’  Firstly, the reader should consider whether the word ‘engorged’ should be used in a poem, particularly a poem making allusions to the Theotokos, regardless of one’s religious persuasion it is something to be seriously asked. The image is drawn out to include evocations of translucence and is later compared to the light that floods a church’s windows in the morning. That poems have been written about women’s breasts since the beginning of time is beside the point, the genre is not the question, the question is whether light flooding through church’s windows is really a good allusion to be making when describing a woman’s breast, allusions to the Mother of G-d aside. In actuality, it isn’t so much the idea that the poem is trying to express, but rather the words that have been chosen. Perhaps if something other than ‘engorged’ and ‘bosom’ had been used, the poem would have had a better affect. 

Moving away from allusions to childbirth, motherhood, and the creative process more broadly we will now look at some poems by the authors that highlight some aspects, both beautiful and painful, of human relationships. 

They in love and happy.

He: 

When you’re not here,

I imagine –

you simply went 

into the adjacent room.

She:

When you go

into the adjacent room

I imagine – 

that you are no longer here.

(VP. Page 44)

Poems about relationships, about love and intimate connection, are some of the most eternal of poems. For this reason, they are a good test of a poet’s strength, of his or her emotional intelligence. And while there have been those poets more preoccupied with matters of history and time or politics, most have not been known to go without writing at least a few love poems. Pavlova is a poet capable of crossing many genres and themes in her poetry; she can muse about the nature of time, about the miracle of childbirth, about war and viruses, but also about love and relationships. The poem above is written about the latter, as it can hardly be called a love lyric but rather an examination of a relationship: 

It is a relationship poem that exposes the most common issue that faces all -- misunderstanding. We see that when the She of the poem leaves to go elsewhere, the He of the poem imagines that She has only gone to the other room; but when He goes into the other room, She imagines that He is no longer there – either that He has gone elsewhere, or that He no longer exists. For She it is a matter of out of sight, out of mind; while for He it is a matter of absence making the heart grow fonder. Obviously, this reveals something which the characters of the poem may not even know themselves; that they are out of step with one another. 

The construction of the poem is exceedingly simple. Pavlova wastes no words. She includes only that which she has deemed necessary, and while this can be said of the poet’s work as a whole it is especially apparent in this poem. There is an air of eventual heartbreak in the poem, and this tragic feeling is maintained and enhanced by the simplicity of the poem’s form. The sharp, dry words deliver a painful cut to the heart of the reader, much like the smaller, more compact poems of Marina Tsevtaeva do. 

Kneller’s response to this poem on the opposite page gives us a similar situation seen from a different frame of view: 

I close my eyes and you’re twice removed,

Sasha’s bedroom is far gone,

overhead is the same roof

but your moon is my high sun,

and the staircase – a deep rift,

the candelabra – a manic blur.

Like a ghost in a trance, I drift

past the dog that does not stir.

Every night, we are split anew.

Though I know, you are out of range,

I compose lullabies to you,

sowing seeds on the white page.

After all, who could stop the song,

when in love, and somehow, retreat?

With it, nights do not seem long.

With it, silence’s, itself, sweet. 

(AK. Page 45) 

We can imagine that this poem presents the feelings of the He of the Pavlova poem, for this is the perspective of one who is in love, and who concentrates on this love when its object is away. There is a sense of distance, but it is hard to say whether it is a physical or a psychic distance  ‘/overhead is the same roof/but your moon is my high sun,/and the staircase – a deep rift,/.’ Despite this distance the speaker of the poem says that he will ‘compose lullabies’ to the object of his love, even though she is ‘out of range’. The reason for this action is love, ‘/After all, who could stop the song, / when in love, and somehow, retreat?/’ and it is this love which stands to comfort our speaker, making ‘silence’s, itself, sweet’.

This is an example of the two poets’ work coming together in a satisfactory way. In essence, it works here where it did not work as well before. Kneller’s poem is obviously very different from Pavlova’s, but we can see how the two poems play off one another in the collection. 

Another popular theme for Pavlova (and presumably for Kneller as well) is the philosophical poem. A poem that asks questions, or ‘muses’ on the nature of existence, or reality. The following poem of Pavlova falls into this category: 

A moment’s flight – a little moth. So brief! 

Go, catch it now! A moment in your hand,

it tickles you. But open it – a leaf,

autumnal, still not quite yellowed yet.

So place it in the pages, in the cove

of Genesis, Leviticus, but surely

not Song of Songs. Next day – it’s gone. It’s off,

back, it appears, into the flock of moths, - 

the moment that I killed so prematurely. 

(VP. Page 48) 

The poem uses the moth and the leaf as symbols of fleeting moments and time. These notions, in the form of moth and leaf, give the reader a sense of the impermanence of things. The speaker of the poem attempts to place the autumnal leaf ‘not quite yellowed yet’ into the Bible, notably ‘Genesis, Leviticus, but surely/not Song of Songs.(…)’ this is not the first time that Pavlova describes placing leaves in books as the poem prior to this describes a ‘frail illegal leaf’ in a book she is reading. Pavlova is also not the only one to have written about autumnal leaves and the Song of Songs. Anna Akhmatova once described putting a red maple leaf in Song of Songs in the following poem: 

Beneath the roof of a frozen empty dwelling,

I do not count the deathly days. 

I read the letters of the apostles,

I read the psalmist’s words.

But the stars turn blue, but the frost is fluffy,

And each meeting is more miraculous ---

And in the Bible, a red maple leaf

Is placed at The Song of Songs.

(Akhmatova, Winter 1915. Translated, Lilien Sword 2023.) 

However, while in Akhmatova’s poem the speaker chooses to place the leaf within The Song of Songs, the speaker of Pavlova’s poem makes special note that the leaf is not to be placed within The Song of Songs, but rather in the books of Genesis or Leviticus. In both poems, we see the Song of Songs acting as a symbol – here the mention of the Song stands in place for what it represents -- intimate romantic love. The Song of Songs has inspired much controversy throughout its existence. Authorities both Christian and Jewish have at times in their respective histories taken an issue with the Song. At other times, the Song has been interpreted to be representative of first, G-d’s relationship with Israel, and later, of G-d’s relationship with the Church, so it seems that the Song has become a symbol on many levels. In Pavlova’s poem we could read the Song as being there, or not there, to symbolize the unwillingness of speaker to address passionate feelings. While Akhmatova wanted specifically to mark out the Song with her autumn leaf, Pavlova wants to by-pass the Song altogether and stay within Genesis and Leviticus.

The somewhat somber tone of the poem is seen in the poet’s ruminations on the passing of time and the unattainability of moments. That entropy leaves none untouched is a fact of human existence, and poems of and about Time have been written by many poets over the aeons, Brodsky making it his specialty. What the poem also show is that those who try to capture and keep the momentary often rue it ‘the moment that I killed so prematurely’.

Kneller’s response to the Pavlova poem is also about time, and though it refers to a specific time it is full of images of time’s movement generally: 

I recognize the fleeting time, the running rivers,

I recognize the falling leaf by how it shivers,

 By how it falls into the puddle, how it tenses…

I recognize the early dusk with all five senses,

I recognize Orion’s silhouette by any point,

the coming cold by arthritis at the joints,

the chill that knows my body to the marrow – 

I recognize it in the silence of the sparrow,

in shrinking daylight, in the density of soil,

in frosted windows, in the burning of the oil,

in dearth of color, in the darkness – rife and deep,

and in the closeness of your body when we sleep.

(AK. 49) 

The poem describes the onset of winter. It takes as its view the speaker’s experience of the scenes whose arrival alert him to the change in seasons. The first few lines “/I recognize the fleeting time, the running rivers, /I recognize the falling leaf by how it shivers,/” He gives us two images that both speak of time’s movement; the unstoppable current of a flowing river, and the falling of a leaf. Winter itself is a season where one may become acutely aware of time. And though the days are shorter, time does not appear to be so, instead there is a sense of the slowing down of things, with the nights of course, being very long. It is this slow darkness of winter that we see in Kneller’s poem, leaves falling into puddles, an earth devoid of color, and the silence of birds. What we get is a portrait of a scene that would appear to be entirely drear were it not for the final line reference to the body of the speaker’s beloved sleeping closer than usual to him, this is the oft repeated romantic idea that when times are at their darkest and their coldest, a greater intimacy will be established. 

Kneller’s poem reflects Pavlova’s for the reason that it is about time, about the passing of time and of single moments. Both poems reflect the eventuality of things – that time will continue in his motion, disregarding sentiment and attachment of all things to all things. A dreary image you say? No such thing. At least not in Kneller and Pavlova, for while they take on this theme there is something more wondrous and expectant than tragic and depressing about these two poems. Brodsky and Akhmatova treated time’s passing also, but their work was suffused with a deeper melancholy, containing words that cut deep and wounded the reader with their tragedy. 

I have made it sound like Pavlova and Kneller don’t know what they’re doing, that they don’t know how, or have the capacity to, write a poem that wounds its reader. Firstly, it is dependent upon the reader, whether or not a poem has the capacity to do this to them. Secondly, this is not the case. We can agree, I hope, that all great poems cut their reader. This is most often achieved by those poets who lived and captured unremittent tragedy and trauma in its varied forms. We associate it often with those poets who were lined up against the wall, taken to gulags and concentration camps, or with those whose fate it was to suffer the death of loved ones time and again. There are extraordinary cases of suffering documented by poets themselves (Akhmatova, Mandelstam), and there are those whom we associate with tragedy because of how they died (Gumilyov, Lorca) more than because of how they lived, but there are also those poets who have suffered personal loses common to many, it is to the latter that some of Pavlova’s poems lend themselves to. 

The following poem by Pavlova describes a personal sorrow: 

The angelic horde is sweeping 

all away from me, besides

the music played now for the sleeping 

in the coma, at his side.

Shubert. Hayden. Bach. My darling,

rock-a-bye now, sleepy-head.

You are smiling. Departing?

Let me finish. Not just yet. 

(VP. Page 58) 

The poem seems to anticipate loss rather than commemorate it. There is a sense of the inevitable and the immanent. We are told that ‘the angelic horde is sweeping/all away’ from the poem’s speaker, which gives us the impression that what is occurring is in the process of happening. The speaker wants to prolong this last moment, at least long enough to finish her lullaby, but departure is immanent. The short lines, the final small sentences in the poem, make the tone all the more tragic. It is the kind of sadness where only a few words, quick and chopped, escape from one’s mouth – or pen. There is no room for romantic elegiac language, elegies are written after the dead are gone, not when they are in the process of going. There is, once again, something very simple about the poem which gives it its sorrowful and grief filled expression. 

The following poem by Kneller is a classic description of loss and grief: 

Words are most futile when they’re needed most.

Most words are futile always, others – often.

Today all meaning of all words is lost.

They cannot raise a loved one from a coffin.

Today, all senses are devoid of sense.

I don’t believe my nose, my ears, my eyes.

I can’t taste tears. There’s nothing in my hands.

All words are futile. Sentences are lies.

This, in itself, is yet another lie. The clocks

have stopped. The mirrors are all covered.

And silence comes, and suffocates, and floods.

And there is nothing we can tell each other. 

(AK. Page 59) 

Here Kneller is addressing a commonly experienced aspect of grief, the futility of words. Beyond this the poet says that ‘/Most words are futile always, others – often./’ 

An interesting thing for a poet to say; that words are often futile; this is the desire of the poet – to find the words that are worth saying in a sea of meaningless verbs and nouns. The idea that there is something that must be expressed and yet is found to be nearly inexpressible is a common complaint of the artist, no matter the medium. Here this poetic issue is stressed even more by the state of grief that visits its speaker. I have said it is a classic description of grief, by this I mean that people the world over will be able to read this poem and understand its content. The emotion is conveyed clearly by Kneller’s precise language which becomes more condensed and concise as we approach the final lines of the poem. The concise nature of the short, clipped sentences which come to full stop midline is where this poem can be seen as playing off of Pavlova’s poem on the previous page in terms of form.

The Line contains many more poems than those just mentioned. Those that have been mentioned were those which I found to be the most telling of the book’s style and substance as a whole. I recommend the reader buy the book for him or herself and make his or her final opinion in that way, for I have given only a brief overview. Overall, I can say that there were poems in this collection that I found boring, or that grated on my nerves, but I also found poems that were written with attention to craftsmanship, as well as poems of a deep and provoking nature. There are poems which muse on the nature of time, of love, of death, and of life. Poems written by one of the highest regarded Russian poets of today, Vera Pavlova, and poems written by one of America’s best Russian poetry translators, Andrey Kneller, who in this collection has shown that he is capable of writing original verse, as well as of translating the work of other poets. Overall, The Lineis a book that any reader of either Pavlova or Kneller should invest in, it is also a book likely to interest new readers who do not know either Pavlova or Kneller. Any who read this book are likely to find something they enjoy, and perhaps connect very deeply with. 

References:

Pavlova, Vera, and Andrey Kneller. The Line - Poems and Translations . Translated by Andrey Kneller, Kneller, 2022.

Akhmatova, Anna  Andreevna, and L. Bykov. “Ctikhotvorenija i Poemy .” Anna Akhmatova - Ctikhotvorenija Poemy Proza , U-Factorija , Yekaterinburg , Russian Federation , 2005, pp. 84–84.