Bezdelki: Small things (The Emma Press Picks) - Softcover

Rumens, Carol

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1910139807 ISBN 13: 9781910139806

Publisher: The Emma Press, 2017

Synopsis

In Carol Rumens's Bezdelki, small things like the English meaning of her Russian title help to shore up the memory of a life. These elegies for a late partner, written in memory of Yuri Drobyshev, explore the principle that death, even for atheists, isn't purely loss. Instead, a kind of conversation between two people can be continued through willed acts of memory, whether by rooting through incidental artefacts found in a toolbox ('defiant old metals, coupled/irrefutably and awkwardly for life') or by revisiting works of Russian literature that both members of the couple admired. There is a tender goodbye in a hospital, but also the sensual matter of life: yoghurt spoons, stock cubes and duck pat. In Rumens's pamphlet, translations and imitations of Osip Mandelstam share space with fragments of Egyptian mythology and 'a wardrobe of old sweat-shirts' to convey the powerful, and moving, impulse to 'live with your death unburied at my core'.

About this edition

• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 1910139807
• ISBN 13: 9781910139806
• Binding: Paperback