The Essential Poetry of Bohdan Ihor Antonych: Ecstasies and Elegies

Lemko-Ukrainian poet Bohdan Ihor Antonych (1909-37) is not as well-known as such great Slavic Modernist poets as Mandelstam, Pasternak, and Milosz, or their Western European counterparts Eliot, Rilke, and Lorca, but in the opinion of many literary critics he unquestionably should be. Sometimes compared to Walt Whitman and to Dylan Thomas, Antonych, who described himself as “an ecstatic pagan, a poet of the high of spring,” created during his brief lifetime powerful and innovative poetry with astonishing metaphorical constructions. Born in the mountainous Lemko region of Poland, Antonych adopted Ukrainian as his literary language when he moved to Lviv, and virtually transformed the Ukrainian poetic landscape. This essential collection introduces Antonych’s work to new audiences, and includes many first-time English translations, a biographical sketch by Michael M. Naydan, and a comprehensive introduction by Lidia Stefanowska, one of the world’s leading experts on the work of this remarkable Ukrainian poet.