Regina Derieva
Alien Matter: Selected Poems.
Spuyten Duyvil, 104 pages, $10
Regina Derieva is one of the outstanding writers of the contemporary Russian diaspora. Her books have already appeared in English, Swedish, Italian, and French. Her brilliant translations of Czeslaw Milosz, Thomas Merton, Les Murray, and other celebrated poets contribute to her high poetic reputation. Last but not least, she is a profound essayist.
For all that, she has paid a high price. The words of Eugenio Montale, “It’s not possible to exaggerate,” taken by Derieva as an epigraph for her poem “At the Intersection,” would be an appropriate motto for her biography as well. For twenty-six years, she lived in Karaganda, perhaps the most dismal corner of the former Soviet Union—once the center of a vast prison camp universe, later just a gloomy industrial city. Having acquainted herself with Soviet mores better than anyone could wish to, she managed to emigrate. Her experience in Israel and Sweden was, in many respects, no less taxing. It intensified the sense of existential exile that has become her trademark.
This new book of Derieva’s poetry in translation presents only a sampling of her extensive work, which consists of at least twenty collections. Still, it is a gift for every connoisseur of poetry. The main tonality of her writing manages to combine extreme tension and minimalist technique. Derieva’s poems are, as a rule, concise, built on distant associations; she frequently—and successfully—employs a characteristic Russian device, namely the interplay of
