Buy *Not Akhmatova* For The Holidays!

Maybe? You must know someone who likes poetry, right?

The holiday season is upon us! Also coincidentally I just got sales figures for Not Akhmatova and they are…well, let’s be generous and say that sales have been modest.

So…help them become less modest? If you like my writing, you will (maybe?) love Not Akhmatova! Here’s the description from publisher Ben Yehuda Press.

“Not Akhmatova” by Noah Berlatsky navigates the intricate dance between homage and reinvention, drawing inspiration from the works of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. A book of quasi translations, appropriations, and alienations, it is also an authentic and unique examination of rootlessness and the need to belong. Berlatsky’s argumentative and proud poems explore his own relationship with Russia as well as the concept of Jewish diaspora identity.

You can order the book from the press, from Amazon, from B&N—maybe from other places too!

You can read more about Not Akhmatova in this essay I wrote at the Cincinnati Review. And here’s a poem from the collection I included with that essay.

Lot’s Wife (as translated by Noah Berlatsky)

The righteous man followed God’s messenger,
huge and terrible, like a black mountain.
His great back to Lot’s wife was sorrow and fear.
She longed to stop and see just once again

the white spires of her home, the place
in the square where she sang to her children.
The windows of the house where in joy and pain
she gave birth to her children.

And so she turned back, for one last sight.
Her eyes like those windows were empty.
Her body was a pillar of salt, bleached white.
Her feet were rooted in place, like a memory.

We aren’t supposed to mourn her.
She’s a fool, and so many others burned.
They say do not look towards her
who defied God, and turned.

I hope some of you will check it out. And buy copies for all your friends and family! No holiday gathering complete without it!

I’ll probably be posting lightly here and there the next couple days; will be back in full swing after the weekend. Have a good holiday all!