Cossacks and Bandits

Katia Kapovich is a bilingual poet writing in English and Russian. She is the author of five collections of Russian verse and of a book of English language poetry, Gogol in Rome (Salt, 2004), shortlisted for the Jerwood Alderburgh Prize 2005 in England. Her English poems have also appeared in the London Review of Books, The New Republic, The Independent, Harvard Review, Ploughshares, The American Scholar, The Antioch Review, Jacket, and numerous other periodicals. She received the 2001 Witter Bynner Fellowship from the US Library of Congress. In 2007 she will be Poet-in-Residence at Amherst College. Kapovich lives in Cambridge, MA, where she co-edits Fulcrum: an annual of poetry and aesthetics.

• Europe’s GateTutorHeroThey’ve killed the rat that lived aloneThe BellsA BurnInk RainThe Girl That Saved a VillageCommercial ShootThe Hardest Money I MadeSatoriDum Spiro ScriboThe Airport is Another CountryThe Race We LostThe Happiest Money I MadeTo Catch a HedgehogForewordIn AbsentiaThe Birth of Comedy out of the Spirit of GossipA Movie Star over Drinks Upstairs at the PuddingThe FerryCall-UpIn Nabokov’s MemoryGood LuckA Portrait of a Dog as an Older GuyEveryone Is SavedA Cup of Coffee on the Romanian BorderGuest and GhostDrawing LessonHermitageDecember 10Hide and SeekSaturday at Schoenhof’s Foreign BooksFlamenco EveningLocked Out Fifteen Minutes and Eight YearsLaundromatA Treatise on BoredomPot LuckMike the MeshugganahLeaving WoodsholeWriting HomeMuseumSergeant DMiragePeople versus TreesClock HandsSticking to the TruthWard Number SixLiteinii Avenue, St. PetersburgThe KissLiferThe BrawlVertigoHappy FaintingThe Stolen SkyscraperThe Big DigThe UnswimmableCountingStrong Arms“Mother, I can still touch those winters…”PromenadeTo Whom It May ConcernThe DiveA Fight on My HandsMatchesThat OneConfession of an UrbanistA Strange LanguageBottom LineWho Else?SecretsMusicA Kind of Normal LifeThe Best LinePostcard from MoscowThe Seventh String Cossacks and BanditsThe WallGarbage Day

Katia Kapovich possesses one of the freshest, most arresting poetic voices I have heard in a long time. She can sway effortlessly from the most common detail into zones of sheer imaginative wonder. That she offers a rare view of a poet’s daily life in Soviet Russia only adds to the broader significance of her writing. Gogol in Rome is a powerful gathering of her best work in English.