Hollywood's Echoes of Odessa

This February, Boris Dralyuk and I met in Plummer Park in Los Angeles to speak about his new book, My Hollywood, about poetry and translation, and about Los Angeles and Odessa. At the time, it was still possible to speak of Ukraine casually, to be bored by it—even for the two of us, who were both born there and continue to write in the motherland’s sprawling shadow. But a great deal changes in a few months’ time, and transcribing Boris’ interview now, I found myself longing for the time when Ukraine still felt like casual subject matter, when it was possible to speak of it as the distant old country, to smile with indulgence, admitting one’s own provincial past, to joke at its expense. All of that seems impossible now. In retrospect, the conversation, held right at the cusp of the war, now feels like a gift, and the poems—particularly those filled with echoes of a distant past—are like glowing embers, ready for history’s anxious breath to send them into flames.