What Sparks Poetry a series of original essays that explores experiences and ideas that spark the writing of new poems. In our new series focused on Translation a group of poet-translators share a seminal experience in translation. Each Monday's delivery brings you the poem and an excerpt from the essay.  
Julia Nemirovskaya
Translated from the Russian by Boris Dralyuk
Pretend it’s your bread and butter
pretend that it pays
Head to the ramshackle byre
wearing your only dress
Lead the moon-white bull
out to the fields
He will give you no milk
no golden fleece
The bull is all nostrils
all eyes
he longed to graze
on the grassy sod
and you fed him
you saved him
For one gaze
one nod



Стих

Сделай вид, что это твой хлеб
что тебе за него платят
Иди в разваленный хлев
в одном-единственном платье
Выводи на поле быка
белого как луна
Он не даст молока
или золотого руна
Он весь из ноздрей
из глаз
соскучился по ходьбе
а ты его пас
и спас
За один
кивок
тебе
from the journal WASHINGTON SQUARE REVIEW 
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Cover image of the Washington Square Review
What Sparks Poetry:
Boris Dralyuk on Julia Nemirovskaya's "Verse"

"'Verse,' by the Russophone American poet Julia Nemirovskaya (whose surname, it occurs to me, might share an origin with Nemerov’s in the town of Nemyriv, Ukraine), spoke to me straight away, as Julia’s poems always do. I’ve been translating her work for over a decade now, developing a vocabulary in English that isn’t quite mine and isn’t quite hers (how could it be, since she writes in Russian?) but is very much ours.
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Color photograph of a restored room in the Dickinson residence
Emily Dickinson at Home

"The house is presented as it might have looked in 1855, when the Dickinsons moved back in following a period of financial hardship, and when Emily, then 25, began her most productive period....Copies of The Springfield Daily Republican (where a handful of her poems were published anonymously in her lifetime) and The Atlantic Monthly sit on the tables, as if just put down." 

via THE NEW YORK TIMES
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