My Poetry Book,*Not Akhmatova,* Publishes Today!

I'll send a bonus chapbook to first ten who order!

My first poetry collection, Not Akhmatova, is out today from Ben Yehuda Press. Here’s the press description.

“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? Let me know if you find it somewhere else!

So, I’m urging you to buy my book! and! as an incentive! The first ten of you all who reach out to let me know you’ve ordered it (either preorder or just got it today) can get a special bonus book; give me your address and I’ll send you my above/ground chapbook “Send $19.99 for Supplements and Freedom.” My email is myname at gmail (you don’t need proof of purchase or anything; I’m happy to trust you.) And hey, here is Goose with said chapbook.

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.

So, I’m trying not to be too verklempt about all this. I’ve wanted to be a poet for like 30 years with…very limited success. Getting a book of my creative writing out there is very exciting, even though obviously the audience for poetry is not so big. But! Hopefully the audience is big enough to include you. Thanks for reading and supporting me, you all, and I hope at least some of you enjoy this weird thing I wrote, about not being a famous poet and finding a place anyway where you’re not supposed to be.