This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you four poems by the poet and artist Gena Gruz in Aaron Poochigian’s translation. Reflecting on the Bulldozer Exhibition of 1974—where Soviet authorities sent literal bulldozers to destroy the art pieces of an unofficial art exhibition held by a group of avant-garde artists—Gruz’s poems respond to a crucial juncture in the history of modern Russian art. Be it the “budding façade” of marching girls or a “goldfish in fishnet negligee,” her poems, terse as they are, bristle with the power to invoke a surreal atmosphere in which a new social world is on the verge of being born, and a new language articulated.
Girls in 1981
girls are marching
moving en masse in formation
government provisions
are rearing outspoken heroines
their legs are covered with the down of pre-pubescence
their toenails are covered in polish the color of poppies
they in sailor suits
budding façade
Tree
A tree is bowing to a locomotive
Shovel me into the furnace instead of coal
Wrapped like herring in newspaper
It will be burnt for power
It won’t become a coffin
It won’t become a fence
won’t see a girl coming home from school
Room
Drapery in a breeze
Brushed an armchair
A sharp-angled table
Spread its legs
I entered the room
Greeted the furniture
I live now in the habitat
Of reticent furniture
Rus
A mermaid in a tree whips a chained cat whips it
A calf butts an oak in the darkness
A goldfish in fishnet negligee
A two-headed eagle sips tea behind bars
A troika of horses with bells on trots
toward a hut standing on chicken legs
Translated from the Russian by Aaron Poochigian
Gena Gruz, a poet and an artist, has a PhD in Molecular Biology from NYU. Born in the Soviet Union, she moved to the US in her early teens and now lives in New York City. Her artwork was part of a traveling exhibition “The Modernism and Post-Modernism: Russian Art of the Ending Millennium.” She is the author of two poetry books, Radiant Solitude (2018) and Earthly Entities (2019), both from Liberty Publishing House, and her poetry is a part of international Russian anthology Artelen, 2021. Her poems have appeared in Interpoezia, National Translation Month, and elsewhere.
Aaron Poochigian earned a PhD in Classics from the University of Minnesota and an MFA in Poetry from Columbia University. His thriller in verse, Mr. Either/Or, was released by Etruscan Press in the fall of 2017. A recipient of an NEA Grant in translation, he has published translations with Penguin Classics and W. W. Norton. His latest book, American Divine, the winner of the Richard Wilbur Award, came out in 2021. His work has appeared in such publications as Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, and POETRY.
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