Dancing in Odessa

$19.95

by Ilya Kaminskly

Winner of the prestigious Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, selected by poet and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Eleanor Wilner who says, “I’m so happy to have a manuscript that I believe in so powerfully, poetry with such a deep music. I love it.” One might spend a lifetime reading books by emerging poets without finding the real thing, the writer who (to paraphrase Emily Dickinson) can take the top of your head off. Kaminsky is the real thing.

Impossibly young, this Ukrainian immigrant makes the English language sing with the sheer force of his music, a wondrous irony, as Ilya Kaminsky has been deaf since the age of four. In Odessa itself, “A city famous for its drunk tailors, huge gravestones of rabbis, horse owners and horse thieves, and most of all, for its stuffed and baked fish,” Kaminksy dances with the strangest — and the most recognizable — of our bedfellows in a distinctive and utterly brilliant language, a language so particular and deft that it transcends all of our expectations, and is by turns luminous and universal.

by Ilya Kaminskly

Winner of the prestigious Tupelo Press Dorset Prize, selected by poet and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Eleanor Wilner who says, “I’m so happy to have a manuscript that I believe in so powerfully, poetry with such a deep music. I love it.” One might spend a lifetime reading books by emerging poets without finding the real thing, the writer who (to paraphrase Emily Dickinson) can take the top of your head off. Kaminsky is the real thing.

Impossibly young, this Ukrainian immigrant makes the English language sing with the sheer force of his music, a wondrous irony, as Ilya Kaminsky has been deaf since the age of four. In Odessa itself, “A city famous for its drunk tailors, huge gravestones of rabbis, horse owners and horse thieves, and most of all, for its stuffed and baked fish,” Kaminksy dances with the strangest — and the most recognizable — of our bedfellows in a distinctive and utterly brilliant language, a language so particular and deft that it transcends all of our expectations, and is by turns luminous and universal.

Winner of the Dorset Prize for Poetry

selected by poet and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Eleanor Wilner

About the Author

Ilya Kaminsky is author of Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo, 2004) and co-editor of The Ecco Book of International Poetry (2010) and editor of This Lamentable City: Poems of Polina Barskova (Tupelo, 2010). In the past, he has taught at San Diego State University and in the New England College M.F.A. Program. He currently teaches in Princeton and lives in New Jersey.

Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, former Soviet Union in 1977, and is now widely regarded as the most exciting young poet in America. In 1993, his family received asylum from the American government and came to the United States. Ilya received his BA from Georgetown University and subsequently became the youngest person ever to serve as George Bennet Fellow Writer in Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy. Dancing in Odessa is his first full length book. In 2005 alone, Ilya Kaminsky won Whiting Prize, the 2005 Metcalf Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 2005 Foreword Poetry Book of the Year award.

Advanced Praise

…a remarkable debut, one that affords a rare and exhilarating pleasure: the sense of being at the start of something marvelous. —Boston Review

A superb and vigorous imagination, a poetic talent of rare and beautiful proportions, whose work is surely destined to be widely and enthusiastically noticed and applauded. This is the start of a brilliant career. —Anthony Hecht

Kaminsky is more than a promising young poet; he is a poet of promise fulfilled. I am in awe of his gifts. —Carolyn Forché

Passionate, daring to laugh and weep, direct yet unexpected, Ilya Kaminsky&rsquos poetry has a glorious tilt and scope. —Robert Pinsky

Dancing in Odessa made it onto Jane Hirshfield’s Ploughshares Editor’s Shelf (Spring 2006); “This first full-length book is a breathtaking debut.”

Poetry Flash noted Dancing in Odessa in it’s New & Noted column for Summer/Fall 2005.

Pleiades Review of Books featured an excellent review of Dancing in Odessa.

Aviya Kushner reviewed Dancing In Odessa and interviewed Ilya Kaminsky in The Jerusalem Post.

Reviewer Jeannine Hall Gailey has fine words of praise for Ilya Kaminsky’s Dancing in Odessa in the Oct–Dec 2004 issue of the Pedestal Magazine.

The Los Angeles Times said “Dancing in Odessa is a rich, reverberative dance with memories of a haunted city…” (Los Angeles Times, Part R; Pg. 9, June 27, 2004, Carol Muske-Dukes)

The Spring 2004 issue of Small Spiral Notebook has a smashing review of Dancing in Odessa.

Also available in ebook format through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, and Kobo.

Awards:
2004 ForeWord Magazine Poetry Book of the Year, Award Winner
2005 Addison M. Metcalf Award in Literature American Academy of Arts and Letters
Whiting Writers’ Award in 2005
The 2005 American Academy of Arts and Letters Metcalf Award
The Ruth Lilly Fellowship from Poetry Magazine
ForeWord Magazine’s “best poetry book of 2005”
The Dorset Prize (2002)

Format: Paperback
ISBN: 978-1-932195-12-5