ELJ Editions; Standard Edition (June 11, 2024)
ISBN-10 : 1942004710 , ISBN-13 : 978-1942004714,
available through ELJ, Amazon, or Barnes and Noble
Anton Yakovlev’s latest book of poems, One Night We Will No Longer Bear the Ocean, is, on the one hand, difficult. That is, the meaning of the lines are not obvious – lexical Rubik’s Cubes that need to be turned ‘round and ‘round before their intent becomes clear. On the other hand the poems are easy, the way opening a great heap of presents on Christmas morning is easy for a child – one delight after another along with the knowledge that the toys unboxed can be played with (the clothes worn, the books read) time after time from the initial delight in their newness through to something familiar and, finally, treasured.
The collection is divided into four sections, with thirteen poems in each section. There is, however, an introductory poem that lets readers know what they are in for. In it we meet a couple, sitting on opposite corners of the bed, facing away from each other. What are they doing there? Are they simply tired from the long flight?
It was dusk, and the statue of Edward Snowden
was working overtime to track the deletions
in my last email to you.
All those words I had refused. [At the Airport Hotel, p 3]
The narrator wrote his love an email, and not an easy one. But why Snowden, the CIA operative who exposed our global surveillance network? It wasn’t Snowden, though, but a statue of that whistleblower. Only Russia would erect a statue to Snowden. Yakovlev, originally from Moscow, chooses his words carefully. “Refused,” is a weighted word in Russia. “Refuseniks” were denied the right to emigrate from the old Soviet Union. Here the poet has refused to let certain words go out with the email. The narrator had deleted words before sending his email, yet they did not completely disappear, but were still there on the bed:
…slowly
crawling off the edges,
stinging our bare feet.
And so the collection begins. Throughout the fifty-two poems, Yakovlev refers to both the “we” that was and the “you” that is now apart. (Though, as with the meaning of any given line, the state of their relationship is not obvious.) At times it seems as if the other has perished. At other times, she is living just across the street. Now she seems like a callous human, the cruelest of tormentors, while elsewhere she seems more like Goethe’s Ewig-Weibliche – the eternal feminine. I feel that I will be turning that Rubik’s Cube through many more readings.
Even if I knew the meaning of these poems, I would not tell you. Where is the fun in that? This isn’t a Masters Thesis after all, it is an enticement to read this collection out of all the other collections published this year, and, anyway, meaning isn’t everything. What about emotion? What about music?
Certainly there is – or was – joy in the relationship:
And all the cashiers in the chocolate store loved us.
No occasion to dream of poison. So much was said
through eye contact, even when there was none.
Our little corner welcomed blossoms while
we sat speed reading. [Anxiety, p 10]
As the reader progresses into the book’s mid-section, there are ever more scenes rife with despair:
When the only person who understood you wishes you dead,
the smell of an approaching forest fire feels like a footnote.
And
Each morning the dogs found skeletons of burnt songbirds.
Each morning you looked at the vodka bottle under your window.
[The Self-conscious Gorgeousness of Sunsets, p 39]
By section IV, though, we start to see a relationship that has moved past both infatuation and the wounds of rejection into something more… mature? Resigned?
And so, after all that cheeky volcano stuffing,
after all those wannabe Bastille manifestos,
we finally find our shared history in a place
that yields itself to sequels, alternate versions… [Exhibition Match, p 66]
As for the music in Yakovlev’s words, well, it’s simply everywhere. Though the lines I’ve cited to this point don’t seem particularly to be written in form, there are familiar forms here and there – a prose poem, a pantoum, a couple of triolets and a Spenserian sonnet that begins:
I Zen my way through your legato tale
of balding Mensa men you’ve grown to hate.
I nod and clasp your hand but know I’ve failed
to grasp your zeitgeist. Plus it’s getting late. [Bedtime. P 12]
Turn to a page at random, and you will find lines and couplets that cry out to be read aloud:
Tomorrow’s most remarkable phenomenon
will be the titanium texture of honeysuckle. [The Line Between Our Lanes, p 16]
or
I window-watch the ladies on the highway each morning,
driving to their jobs at electrical corporations,
with their revealing dresses and gothic hair, [The Grass Highway, p 48]
What more can I say to tempt you? The poems are full of enchanting imagery and evocative allusions: James Joyce, Monty Python, Nabokov, Saint Kilda’s sheep, Charon and Cerberus, Marconi and Stravinsky. Finally, if you are new to Anton Yakovlev’s poetry, you will find an artist with his feet firmly planted mid-career, but you are still early enough to become a fan before he has ascended to the pantheon of our great writers, known to all, a household name. And if you want to ignore my peroration and discover Yakovlev unaided:
That’s okay, I’d say to myself.
At least you are here. [At the James Joyce House, p 68]