'Science
teaches that eighty percent of the universe
consists
of dark matter, so called. Regina Derieva learned
this
same fact in a very hard school. She does not consent
to
it, though. She knows that the hurt truth in us points
to
a dimension where, for example, victory is cleansed of
battle.
Her strict, economical poems never waver from
that
orientation.'
Les
Murray
'It
would be an understatement to name Regina Derieva one
of
the outstanding writers of the contemporary Russian
diaspora:
she has won acclaim as the author of powerful
and
inimitable verse, who occupies a unique niche in world
poetry
today.'
The
New Criterion
'The importance of
Derieva’s poetry lies in this sense of how
worlds permeate each
other, how the world inside and the
world outside harmonize
or struggle against each other with
little distinction between
the state of politics and culture
and the state of the
soul. '
Pembroke Magazine
'I've
read Regina's poems and found many of them very
striking,
particularly the newer ones. She's a real
metaphysical!'
James
Lasdun
'Derieva
delights in contradictions and is a master of the
epigram. 'Maxims and
Paradoxes on the Accidental Sheets'
begins: "All my life
/ I sought / an angel. / And he
appeared/ in order to
say: / 'I am no angel!'" Throughout
it all she wears her
heart on her sleeve -- and perhaps this
makes her unfashionable
among contemporary poets; but hers
is a brave and eminently
readable voice.'
Poetry Review
(UK)
'They
[ Regina Derieva's poems] are remarkable for their
pain
and lyricism, and she should be better known in the
States.'
Annie
Finch
'In
her collection of translated Russian poems, “Alien
Matter,”
Regina Derieva employs the significant markers of
anaphora
to paradoxically call into question the state of a
shared
common tradition, when we are at the brink of
overindulgent
faux-internationalism and, also paradoxically,
in
less communication with the people around us than ever
before.'
Salt
Magazine
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