Яна Кане - Зимородок

Russian canvas; grows from Russian soil, from clay (a word that occurs repeatedly in her poetry, which is important and revealing); from the Russian subconscious and Russian intimations of God. It is Kane’s religious sensibility – not at all church-based, and even more definitely not sectarian – that places her poetry into the tradition of Tyutchev, Tarkovsky, Zabolotsky; it is this circle of authors that determines its poetics and themes.

Poetry needs no introduction, justification or explanation. Kane is a mature poet who has found a way to draw a lyrical theme out of her drama and to transmute this drama into literary fact. Since by now thousands of our compatriots – former, returned, or living in two countries – are burdened with such a double being, this book will be in demand, it will be read, and it will lighten many a soul.

This is the first case in which I do not regret that a talented poet left Russia. She emigrated into literature. And that is the best thing you can choose to do with yourself.

Dmitry Bykov

Зимородок / Kingfisher

Зимородок

Зимородок живёт в трёх стихиях. Гнездо – нора в земле. Пропитание птица добывает подводной охотой. А странствия – это полёт.

Яна Кане – человек, обитающий в трёх стихиях. Она обрела литературный голос на английском языке, но не утратила русский язык, не оборвала связь со своим наставником, Лейкиным, с кругом общения, в который вошла благодаря участию в его студии. По профессии Кане – статистик. Она так обозначила связь между своей профессиональной и литературной деятельностью: «Поэзия и статистика – это два разных языка, на которых я говорю о том, что структура и неопределённость в равной степени присущи нашему существованию».

Kingfisher

A kingfisher lives in three different elements: it builds its nest by digging a tunnel in the earth, travels by flying, feeds by diving and swimming to catch fish.

Yana Kane inhabits three domains: Russian poetry, English poetry, and statistics. She grew up in the Soviet Union and began to compose poetry as a child. She came to the US as a refugee at the age of 16. Her poems and translations in Russian and English appear in anthologies and magazines in the US, Russia, and Western Europe. She holds a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Princeton University and a Ph. D. in Statistics from Cornell University. She works as a statistician. For Kane, poetry and statistics reflect both the structure and the uncertainty of our existence.

Посвящаю с любовью моей семье: Аде и Зиновию (Жене) Кане, Брюсу Эсригу и Ариели

и с благодарностью – моим учителям: Вячеславу Лейкину, Стелле Вербицкой, Профессору Эллен Чансес, Крейгу Келлер, Мастеру Ченг Хсианг Ю, Сенсею Грегу О’Коннор, Роберту Фридману

и членам важных для меня сообществ: Миллбурнского клуба, Beth Hatikvah synagogue, the Aikido Centers of New Jersey, Madison Studio Yoga, the Arts by the People program.

Я признательна Брюсу Эсригу, который помог мне отредактировать англоязычные тексты, проявив при этом свойственные ему вдумчивость, остроумие, любовь к слову (а также пристрастие к точке с запятой).

Искренне благодарю Рашель Миневич, Эда Побужанского и Александра (Сашу) Казакова за полезные советы и ценные замечания.

Я рада, что Анастасия Шеперд стала моим партнёром в литературной игре, которую мы назвали «Странники в странном мире». Часть этой игры вошла в цикл The Age of discovery.

With love to my family: Ada and Zinovy Kane, Bruce Esrig and Ariel

With gratitude to my teachers:

Vyacheslav Leikin,

Stella Verbitskaya,

Professor Ellen Chances,

Craig Keller,

Master Cheng Hsiang Yu,

Sensei Greg O’Connor,

Robert Friedman,

to the communities of the Millburn Club, Beth Hatikvah synagogue, the Aikido Centers of New Jersey, Madison Studio Yoga, and the Arts by the People program.

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Bruce Esrig for editing the English language texts. He brought to this task his penchant for deep thought, his playful sense of humor and his love of words and of semicolons.

I want to thank Rashel Minevich, Ed Pobuzhansky and Aleksandr (Sasha) Kazakov for insightful comments and valuable suggestions.

I am glad that Anastasya Shepherd is my co-creator of the literary game we called “Travelers in a strange world”. This game is great fun to play, and it inspired “The Age of discovery”.

Metamorphosis English language poems

Metamorphosis

What I used to think of

As myself

Turned out to be

A chrysalis.

Now it has split open.

An old woman is slowly emerging.

She will wait patiently

For her crumpled rags to unfurl,

For the sun to harden them

Into wings.

Ripening

My little daughter wakes in tears:

She fancies that her bed is drawn

into a dimness which appears

to be the deep of all her fears

but which, in point of fact, is dawn.

Vladimir Nabokov

Not life or death,

Creation or its fall,

Not good or evil,

But the whole, the all —

This fruit of knowledge

Is still dim, still green.

The ripening of dawn

Remains unseen.

The soul does not yet trust

The sense of sight,

Still hides in terror

From the kindling light.

It’s here, though each glimpse of it is brief,

It’s here, the lambent glow of joy and grief.

The Age of discovery

1. Indra’s net

Am I reflections of the world or the mirrors reflecting it?

Anastasya Shepherd

One story of this world

Begins with “Let there be light”.

I do not think that punctuation

Had been invented

When these words were first recorded.

But judging from what follows,

An exclamation mark

Should cap that sentence.

But what about Indra’s net?

What are the words

That first emitted and still carry

The light that knits it into one great whole?

What punctuation should we use?

A question mark seems most fitting.

You and I, like everybody else,

Are both:

Jewels linked into a net

And reflections bouncing within a hall of mirrors.

But let us not get trapped.

We have the power to play it

Like a game, a dance,

A laugh-inducing tickle.

2. Voyagers

Я

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