Sofiya Yuzefpolskaya Tsilosani, Ph.D

Dr. SOFIYA YUZEFPOLSKAY-TSILOSANI, PhD (University of Washington, Seattle)

poet, translator, independent author

Reviews and responses

The Pulse of Time: Immortality and the Word in the Poetry of Arsenii Tarkovskii

"Yuzefpolskaya's book is useful on multiple levels. In the first place, it makes the basic outline of Tarkovsky's creative biography available to non-Russian-speakers. It organizes his work into recognizable themes and then analyses it with delicate close-readings -- often line-by-line -- at the same time linking it to broader themes within Russian culture. The book also provides translations of many of Tarkovsky's poems. Yuzefpolskaya is clearly a gifted poet, and without being slavishly derivative, she often succeeds in giving the English reader a fine, surprising sense for the verbal texture of the original. Perhaps the strongest point of her book, however, is the fact that it "speaks" the language of its subject. Far too many works of English-language literary criticism appeal to an audience comfortably ensconced in a Western frame of reference. Academic presses can be especially grievous in this regard. Topics like religion or spirituality are kept at arm's length by a jargon borrowed from fashionable, usually Continental philosophy, which is meant to stand in for the exotic. In fact, by adopting this familiar jargon, the critic "domesticizes" his subject matter -- and in exactly the same way as translation too often does -- a tendency that scholars like Lawrence Venuti, for example, have been at great pains in recent years to expose. Yuzefpolskaya resists it quite naturally, speaking in a clear, understandable voice that is also the authentic voice of the spiritual world that Tarkovsky inhabited. It is the same spiritual world that his readers still live in today

Dr. George Rueckert

Deputy Director of the Language Center · Almaty

Lektor in Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen (JLU)

BLUE LIGHT: SELECTED POEMS

"I am pleased to announce a new book of poems by poet, scholar, and friend Sofiya Yuzefpolskaya-Tsilosani.

BLUE LIGHT: SELECTED POEMS

It looks like a beautiful book, well-designed with a pleasing presentation. Sofiya writes poems I like. They are deep, evocative, and artistic. They have that certain characteristic and indefinable Russian quality, some echoing for me the aesthetic tradition or sensibility from the Silver Age. One of the chapters has English poems as well." Tim Buck

http://mydrippingbrain.blogspot.com/2012/09/i-am-pleased-to-announce-new-book-of.html

"What I like about your poems is how the lines are like spoken spells. They constitute an act of indirect conjuring. In the openness of your lyrics, the more-than-life peeps through. The mystic unsayable that Wittgenstein alluded to or pointed toward is given space to breathe." From the Open letter to Sofiya. Tim Buck (http://mydrippingbrain.blogspot.com/2013/02/open-letter-to-sofiya.html)

On Sofiya's poem Snails and Blue birds. To Bukowski.

Chet Bogar: a tastefully dark journey through the image filled corridors of regret and compassionless resolve. Very beautiful piece:and.. great piece

Mike Kirakossian: absolutely curtains.. the flowing imagery of light and the molding of an orgasmic feeling; shape shifting it's essence from an imprisoned woman into an original whisper of breezes and hissing of light surmounting to a remarkable melody of the snails' souls leaking into the gentle waves of sand.. great piece

Zachary Guadamour: This is a phenomenal write, the images cascading one after another and pooling into a greater body of water. Th echoes of some of Bukoski type language enhance the authenticity of the great piece. It is a pleasure to read such good work.

On Sofiya's poem Mein Klein Schtern

Masha Calloway: 'Some sad knights still confuse her pale appearance with the majesty of the moon...' what a way to open..I almost stopped reading this poem.. it so pierces.. the sparkle kept me going.. beautiful beautiful and deeply moving..

Fred LaMotte: Hypnotic incantation, a kaddish for the living, somehow lit like a Chagall with rainbows of wisdom, gazing at which we do not know whether to marvel or weep

Michael Sullivan: Outstanding....

On Sofiya 's poem SUNSPOT. ..ACCATTONI...PASOLINI

Michael Sullivan: A remarkable piece of work. A hair shirt knitted from the strands of human folly...

Diane Dehler: This is a vast, haunting poem. Remarkable

Fred LaMotte: A profoundly modern yet ancient voice.

elephants and grasshopper

if you want i will tuck you in bed

and i will give you warm milk in a clay mug
smell the grass of the far away meadows
where elephants roam free with grasshoppers
in a tall grass of my land
growing medicine for your cold

and while you are sleeping
i will sit in the corner
growing huge wings
of a black bird -- so black -- so black
but if you wake up
in the middle of the night
you should be not scared
they are just the shadows of my past

just the shadows

mein klein schtern

Some sad knights still confuse her pale appearance with the majesty of the moon...

"mein shtetl vingl,mein klein foigle, mein klein schtern"

The baby screams of a violin from under the window of
her childhood memory, the tiny bells from under the slides
on the Volga planes, the dull light of the soviet New Year
tree star -- in the frozen gardens of Russian winters --
there piercings and sparklings of open colors:

"mein shtetl vingl,mein klein foigle, mein klein schtern"

The snowflake stars singing on the Saint Petersburg theater squares,
falling through the magical street lanterns, through the milky way
of Russian vowels, poems discovered in the rustling gloom of the Russian
decadent autumn -- there piercings and sparklings of open colors:

"mein shtetl vingl, mein klein foigle, mein klein schtern"

The needle rays of the grandmother's old rubby broach
worn at the first ball, the first bloody night stand,
the pale numb senseless loss of virginity --
there piercings and sparklings of open colors, the shadow cries:

"mein shtetl vingl, mein klein foigle, mein klein schtern"

The stars of the milk drops spilled from the bucket of Tovi the Milkman
on to the book on the night stand of her loneliness,
the Wondering Stars of Sholom Aleichem. the brooding stars of
the ancestral blood squished from the grapes in each Song of Songs,
the dancing shattering hot ecstasy of the star of David,
the cool showering light of mercy in the Bethlehem Star,

there piercings and sparklings of open colors, the shadow cries:

"mein shtetl vingl, mein klein foigle, mein klein schtern"

the stars of rosebud bosoms spark the kindest laughter
from under the shiny shoe nails of Charley Chaplin,
the flower flies into the lilac stars on Chagall Paris paintings,
the stars of sweat transpiring onto the cello bodies of Modigliani nudes,
the blue stars of the souls drowning in their empty eyes --
there piercings and sparklings of open colors, the shadow cries

"mein shtetl vingl, mein klein foigle, mein klein schtern"

the empty eyes of the Auschwitz stars: the empty night
stares into the yellow sorrow of the eternal silence,
but there - behind the barbed starry wires of cosmic void
are the piercings and sparklings of open colors: the shadows cry

"mein shtetl vingl, mein klein foigle,
mein klein schtern, mein shtetl meidle" *

And then the dawn of despair. The distances stretched through
the million light years of cosmic exiles with the chandeliers
of florescent darkness in the millions perished souls,
with no encounter as
she conspires to break her rays into
a few small pieces of colored glass, a kaleidoscope
for a dying man to play with -- there
piercings and sparklings of open colors: the mirror shadows cry

"mein shtetl vingl, mein shtetl meidel,
mein klein foigle, mein klein schtern" --

-- just a few pieces of a cheep colored glass which screech an echo
of the died little star -- the simple promise forever
in an ancient Jewish lolling that some knights still confuse
with the majestic sound of the sea waves caused by a pale moon.

"mein shtetl vingl, mein shtetl meidel,
mein klein foigle, mein klein schtern,"

the shadows cry.