About this book
Anna, the border washed your tongue from our tongue.
Anna, the border is a voice that said our name.
“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.
About the Author
Noah Berlatsky is a freelance writer from Chicago. He has published poetry chapbooks from above/ground press, Origami Poetry Project, and LJMcD Communications. He is also the author of Wonder Woman: Bondage and Feminism in the Marston/Peter Comics, 1941-48 from Rutgers UP.
Advance Praise
“One of the gifts of the poet is how they are able to pack so much meaning into so few words. It’s no different with Noah Berlatsky. A conversation, a quarrel, a question, and a lament, over both time and distance, Not Akhmatova is an engaging, searching, thought-provoking collection. Each poem has its own unique and shattering examination of the human condition and human relations. So many sublime gut punches. So many mouthfuls of truth.”
— Robert Jones, Jr., author of The New York Times bestselling novel, The Prophets, a National Book Award finalist.
“A translation is an adaptation is a rewriting is an accusation is a quibble is a love letter. In these poems, Noah Berlatsky approaches the work of Anna Akhmatova—or scrambles off in another direction entirely. Writing under the sign of her name, with her but without trying to become her, Berlatsky gives us Anna in transcreation, in transelation.”
— Sarah Dowling, author of Entering Sappho
“What makes us lean into the spaces of this intimate collection is its emotional accent, how it inflects and de-stresses the art of a legend into new and subtle shapes. Slant rhymes breeze through Berlatsky’s pages, shifting our sense of translation’s horizon while we trace the nuanced and re-nuanced contours of his poet-world.”
— Colin Channer, author, Console
"Introduction"
The poems in Not Akhmatova are all inspired, or in conversation with, the work of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966). At the beginning of the 20th century, while Akhmatova was growing up, my own great-grandparents were emigrating from Russia to the United States to escape the things that most Jewish people in that part of the world were trying to escape. The experiences of oppression and national identity Akhmatova faced variously parallel and contrast with those of my relatives, so she’s a poet who feels like she belongs to me and like she doesn’t, an ambivalence characteristic of diaspora.
Some of the poems here border on translation, though words and meanings are changed fairly freely at the best of times. Other pieces scramble further afield; some are based on her words or ideas, others respond to or argue with her, some are about her. You can go down a rabbit hole to separate out who is who, or let it remain somewhat mysterious; those are both valid approaches to diaspora and identity.
This is not a work of scholarship; even if I wanted to attempt such, I’m a monoglot who’s had to lean on Google and hints from other translators. If you want a less deliberately idiosyncratic approach to Akhmatova, Ruverses.com has a great collection of her poetry in English translation online. D.M. Thomas’ short volume of selected poems is a good place to start in print.
"Leave Your Russia Forever"
Akhmatova believed you can only sustain your art in your native country.
Akhmatova believed you can only sustain your art in your native language.
She said the Revolution was a kind of suicide.
She said Russia was a harlot who did not know who was defiling her.
And she heard a voice saying leave your deaf and sinful land.
And she heard a voice saying leave your Russia forever.
The border will wash your self from your self.
The border will wash your name from your name.
You will be new and you will not know shame.
You will be new and the old defeat forgotten.
But she was indifferent and she was calm.
But she filled her ears with Russian and did not listen.
She remained sorrowful but unstained by exile.
She remained sorrowful but pure as her nation.
Anna, the border washed your tongue from our tongue.
Anna, the border is a voice that said our name.
"The White Stone"
One memory is drowned in me.
In a well, a stone, white.
I will not remove it from me.
It is joy. It is night.
It is all my eyes see.
It is all you can see in my eyes.
It’s a mournful thought, a story
inside, where the stone lies.
The gods turn people into things
that can still feel and know.
You’ve become me. The well sings
with mute wonder. With sorrow.
"Lot’s Wife"
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.
