This book won the 2005 Whiting Writers' Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters Metcalf Award, and the Ruth Lilly Fellowship as well as the Dorset Prize. And these prizes were well deserved according to most critics. The Philidelphia Inquirer had this to say:
"It seemed to take about five minutes to read this book, and when I began again, I reached the end before I was ready. That's how compulsive, how propulsive it is to read. It wraps you in a world created by a new and wonderful poet."
Yes, the marvelous thing about this work is the ease with which it is read, and the power the poems have. His poems are both harsh and soothing, but the soothing side takes over by the end of the book. The content is not the lightest material: He writes about tyranny and death and forgetting. But overall, his love of the language and the decidedly whimsical nature of his delivery left me contemplative, relaxed and engaged. I think this book of haunting and fantastic poems would be a great summer read.
When Kaminsky read at the Falconer Gallery in April, he answered a question regarding why he describes knees, elbows, ankles frequently and he replied: "Usually people ask me about tomatoes, and my answer is 'I like them.' I guess I like bodies too." By the end of Dancing in Odessa, you will like tomatoes, ankles, balconies, lemons, and wind more than you ever have.
Listen to Kaminsky read the titular poem from Dancing in Odessa.
Check out Dancing in Odessa from Burling Library:
PS3611.A467 D36 2004
Or Kaminsky's co-translation of Polina Barskova's book This Lamentable City.
