In
This Is Us Losing Count
, eight contemporary Russian poets obliterate old conventions in their efforts to reckon with the past.
A woman surveys a changing city from her self-described “cloud tower,” recalling where building used to stand. A grandmother spends her hallucinatory final days convening with deceased friends and relatives visible only to her, including a small boy perched on top of the refrigerator. A voracious eater picks through memories in the form of breads, dumplings, sweets, and other snacks that never quite sate her, declaring “I write because I can’t eat enough.” In sinuous translations of verse both irreverent and profound, this fifth installment of Two Lines Press’s Calico Series ask to what extent we must remember in order to reinvent.