{"product_id":"stepanova-maria-ostashevsky-eugene-ovid-void","title":"Stepanova, Maria \u0026 Ostashevsky, Eugene: OVID VOID","description":"\u003cp\u003eWorld Poetry, chapbook\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: June 15, 2025\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA bilingual collection of responses to Ovid’s poems of exile by the Russian poet Maria Stepanova and the American poet Eugene Ostashevsky crosses the border between authorship and translation.\u003cbr\u003eThe Roman poet Ovid wrote his last poems while exiled by Augustus to a border settlement on the Black Sea. The Russian poet Maria Stepanova condensed and paraphrased Ovid’s poems of exile during the winter of the pandemic, which she spent in the countryside outside Moscow. The American poet Eugene Ostashevsky responded to Stepanova’s versions of Ovid as they were being written, from his quarantine in Shanghai. The poets’ bilingual “conversation” violates the distinction between translation and the original in order to describe some of the forms that empire and exile may assume in the modern world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“OVID VOID transposes Ovid’s Tristia into an exuberant idiom that shows the brilliance of two poets, Maria Stepanova and Eugene Ostashevsky. The poems absorb the shock of contemporary lexicon into lines built on Ovid’s plaintive elegies, so that we read of one-night stands and the Labyrinth bookstore, of shipboard transit and National Poetry Day, of bones and stars and snow. There are swords not to be confused with words, there is giggling even as there is wrath. The Russian and the English offer enormous pleasure, as if the joy of the languages could soften exile’s anguish, or could bring one to terms with the ‘reminders of memories that are eroded, erased, or expunged.’” —Stephanie Sandler\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e“Stepanova \u0026amp; Ostashevsky present Ovid as a fiercely expressive mind struggling with the impacts of dislocation and exile.” —Dan Alter, The Transformation Review\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46107532853271,"sku":"9770821741697","price":25.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/Ovid_Void_COVER.webp?v=1794436777","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/stepanova-maria-ostashevsky-eugene-ovid-void","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}