Giornata by Irina Mashinski, Translated by Maria Bloshteyn and Boris Dralyuk
“Irina Mashinski's poems in Giornata inhabit the landscape of elegy and exile, as well as the actual landscape of rural America. She forgets nothing, asking without self-pity, "Who's left?" These translations feel wholly original, rich in music, but mostly rich with the poet's sensibility, the tenderness with which she opens to her losses and offers them to us, like her grandmother's "Moscow teacups" an image so simple and so arresting. Mashinski teaches us to reckon with the past, to know the world as inherently elegiac, and yet to also be tied to the moment, to love the moment, not missing anything, not the clouds blooming outside her window, or the detritus on the forest floor. These are poems to return to and live with.”
— Anne Marie Macari
“Irina Mashinski's poems in Giornata inhabit the landscape of elegy and exile, as well as the actual landscape of rural America. She forgets nothing, asking without self-pity, "Who's left?" These translations feel wholly original, rich in music, but mostly rich with the poet's sensibility, the tenderness with which she opens to her losses and offers them to us, like her grandmother's "Moscow teacups" an image so simple and so arresting. Mashinski teaches us to reckon with the past, to know the world as inherently elegiac, and yet to also be tied to the moment, to love the moment, not missing anything, not the clouds blooming outside her window, or the detritus on the forest floor. These are poems to return to and live with.”
— Anne Marie Macari
“Irina Mashinski's poems in Giornata inhabit the landscape of elegy and exile, as well as the actual landscape of rural America. She forgets nothing, asking without self-pity, "Who's left?" These translations feel wholly original, rich in music, but mostly rich with the poet's sensibility, the tenderness with which she opens to her losses and offers them to us, like her grandmother's "Moscow teacups" an image so simple and so arresting. Mashinski teaches us to reckon with the past, to know the world as inherently elegiac, and yet to also be tied to the moment, to love the moment, not missing anything, not the clouds blooming outside her window, or the detritus on the forest floor. These are poems to return to and live with.”
— Anne Marie Macari