About the Work by Ostap Kin

Moisei Fishbein (1946–2020) is one of the most important Ukrainian-Jewish voices in Ukrainian literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. Born in Chernivtsi, the poet came to Kyiv in the early 1970s after some time in Russia, where he attended university and served his mandatory conscription in the military. In Kyiv he had a wide net of associates, including like-minded people in dissident circles. This could not end well: the KGB wanted him to cooperate in their efforts to expose “threats” to Soviet power. Unwilling to do so, the poet had two choices: a gulag in the Soviet Union or involuntary immigration. From 1979 onwards, Fishbein found himself in forced exile—away from the Ukrainian language, which nonetheless remained a source of inspiration. This period lasted until the late 1980s, when the poet could continue traveling to Ukraine again.

Nurtured in the tradition of Ukrainian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries, with such luminaries and modernists from the 1920s as Mykola Bazhan and Leonid Pervomaisky as his mentors, Fishbein’s work stands out for its ambitious reinvention of poetic style, form, and texture. Fundamental to his upbringing as a poet was a ruthless, aggressive life as a translator. The constellation of names whom he translated includes Paul Celan, Rainer Maria Rilke, Charles Baudelaire, Hayim Nahman Bialik, and many others. The richness of his poetic language emerged with the burgeoning Ukrainian translation tradition of the 1960s of which he was an essential part. Fishbein’s work is thus a fascinating blend of Ukrainian literary tradition, classicist influences, and poignant aspects of other cultures and literatures.

In the poem “[storm, pogrom, wasteland, expulsion],” the direct address is of paramount significance, as is the reference to Rilke’s famous 1902 poem about change. In addition to the point of view (and perhaps precisely because of it), hope, expectation, and solace emerge as prominent forces, especially in comparison with the first, isolated, (and therefore deliberately emphasized) line about destruction, loss, and suffering. 

In the poem “[Ten A.M. And an undated ticket stub],” the cinema becomes a place to distill emotions and memories. The poem’s tone is melancholic: dominated by nostalgia, the search for a place (both literal and metaphysical), and inner disorientation. Everything in this text resembles a montage: the changing images in the newsreels are replaced by moments captured in memory. Perhaps the most important irony is that the exquisite series of images in the film is contrasted with an ungrounded human life and a feeling of not belonging.

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MOISEI FISHBEIN (1946–2020) was an award-winning Ukrainian poet, essayist, and translator, author of the collections Iambove kolo (Iambic Circle, 1974), Zbirka bez nazvy (Collection Without a Title, 1984), Apokryf (Apocrypha, 1996), Rozporosheni tini (Scattered Shadows, 2001), Rannii rai (Early in Paradise, 2006), Prorok (Prophet, 2017), a collection of children’s poetry, Wonderful Garden (1991), and translations from many languages, including German, French, Italian, Hebrew, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Catalan, Romanian, Hungarian, Yiddish, and Georgian. A collection of his translations of Rainer Maria Rilke into Ukrainian appeared in 2018. He was a recipient of the Vasyl´ Stus Prize, the Order of Prince Yaroslav the Wise, the Order “For Intellectual Courage” (awarded by the journal Yi), and the Omelyan Kovch Award. He was a member of the Ukrainian Center of the International PEN Club and the National Union of Writers of Ukraine. In 1979, Fishbein was forced to leave the Soviet Union. In the early 1980s, he worked at the journal Suchanist’ (Munich/New York), a venue of literature, politics, culture, and the arts. Before moving in the early 1980s to Munich, where he took a job as a writer, editor, and correspondent for Radio Liberty/Radio Free Europe, he lived in Israel. Fishbein returned to Ukraine in 2003. His poems have been translated into German, Hebrew, and other languages. His poems in English translation have appeared or scheduled to appear in Modern Poetry in Translation, New England Review, Washington Square Review, and various anthologies.

JOHN HENNESSY is the author of three collections, Exit Garden State (Lost Horse Press, 2024), Coney Island Pilgrims (Ashland Poetry Press, 2013) and Bridge and Tunnel (Turning Point Books, 2007). He is the translator, with Ostap Kin, of A New Orthography (LHP, 2020), selected poems by Serhiy Zhadan, finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and co-winner of the Derek Walcott Prize, and the anthology Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond (Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature/HUP, 2023).

OSTAP KIN is the editor of Babyn Yar: Ukrainian Poets Respond, which received an honorable mention for Best Translation Prize from American Association for Ukrainian Studies, and New York Elegies: Ukrainian Poems on the City, which won the American Association for Ukrainian Studies Best Translation Prize. He is the translator, with John Hennessy, of Yuri Andrukhovych’s collection Set Change (NYRB/Poets), the anthology Babyn Yar, and Serhiy Zhadan’s A New Orthography, which won the Derek Walcott Prize and was a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. He translated, with Vitaly Chernetsky, Yuri Andrukhovych’s collection Songs for a Dead Rooster. His work appears in the New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Poetry, World Literature Today, and elsewhere.