Dralyuk, Boris: My Hollywood and Other Poems

Paul Dry Books, paperback

Publication Date: April 5, 2022

Publisher Marketing: A tender collection of original and translated poetry from the editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books exploring the lives and longing of Russian immigrants in L.A.

"The wit and daring of his rhymes and phrasing remind me of that old master, Donald Justice, who dazzled us with the elegance of his forms. Dralyuk carries this high style into the 21st century, and I, for one, am thrilled to be in the presence of his marvelous verbal art. Pay attention, readers: a new maestro is in our midst."—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

My Hollywood and Other Poems is a collection of lyric meditations on the experience of émigrés in Los Angeles. In forms ranging from ballades to villanelles to Onegin sonnets, the poems pursue the sublime in a tarnished landscape, seek continuity and mourn its loss in a town where change is the only constant. My Hollywood draws on the poet’s own life as a Jewish immigrant from the Soviet Union, honors the vanishing traces of the city’s past, and, in crisp and evocative translations, summons the voices of five Russian poets who spent their final years in LA, including the composer Vernon Duke.

"My Hollywood is a book to savor."—A. M. Juster, author of Wonder & Wrath 

"A beautifully evocative debut.”—Vona Groarke, author of Spindrift and Double Negative