ABSTRACT
The arresting title—Life Without—encompassing the Bloodaxe selection of poems and mini-essays by the Russian poet Tatiana Shcherbina (b. 1954) essentially refers to the theme of lost love running movingly through several pieces in the first, and most substantial, section of the book. “Life without you is neglected, ramshackle, / cheap and simply unapproachable,” begins the title poem, “nightmarish like a provincial grocer’s shack, / frozen through in a light summer mac, / without feeling, without right of appeal, / and judgment day, every second signed and sealed.” But it is never clear what has caused the amorous destruction, estrangement, or disappearance. A narrative mystery prevails as the poet, faced with her lover’s absence, writes with an effusiveness that may surprise readers used to more arch evocations of contemporary liaisons. A neo-Romantic exaltation rises from several pages of Life Without, and an aesthetics rooted in the most personal manifestations of European lyric poetry. Shcherbina is unafraid of penning lines like: “I want to be with you till the very last day / and afterwards. Afterwards, if it’s allowed.”
