BOOK NOTES

Collection of poems highlights experiences in Ukraine, Lithuania

"Stranger Truths," by Maureen Passmore. Kent and London: The Kent State University Press, Number 10, Wick Poetry Chapbook Series Three, 2005. 18 pp.

Arising out of the author's experiences living in Ukraine and Lithuania, "Stranger Truths" is the collection of 17 poems by an outsider. Claiming no expert knowledge of the former Soviet Union, Ms. Passmore uses folklore and history to delve into the foreigner experience with unflinching detail and quiet narration.

Although Ms. Passmore has no familial connections to either country, her poems discover personal truths in a foreign landscape - the place where all previous constructions of self burn away in intuitive, and ultimately cherished, moments.

Ms. Passmore's poems recreate these moments, but are consistently told through an inner mirror of these events. Whether searching for the last standing synagogue in Vilnius ("Old Town"), imagining the Ukrainian village ritual of performing a marriage ceremony for a young, unmarried woman before her burial ("To Fulfill Her Life"), or learning her friend killed people for the KGB ("Lonya"), Ms. Passmore uses language to surpass simple retellings in order to unearth explorations of place and the self that are deeper than memory.

Among poems derived from the experience of Ukraine are "Kyiv Checkpoint," "Radiation in Kyiv," "Blessing" - the poetic image of a "rusalka" (or water spirit), "The Fruit Woman," "Titanium Statue on the Dnipro River," "Leaving Ukraine" and "Fourth of July, Misha's Village."

Poet and literary scholar Larissa Szporluk likens Ms. Passmore's poetry "to cut and polished jewels: structurally simple, innately priceless, sharp-edged and brilliant ..."; she goes on to note that "With the jeweler's touch, she brings out just enough edge, then the next. What makes her poetry more than just admirable is the genuine vision behind it: she is determined to recreate emotional experience through a vehicle other than itself ... In a time of highly decorative and self-serving artistry, here comes a poet with the strength of the ground."

Ms. Passmore earned an M.F.A. from Bowling Green State University, where she received the Distinguished Master's Thesis Award. Her poems have appeared in Sycamore Review and have won the Mississippi Review Poetry Prize. Ms. Passmore currently lives in Pittsburgh.

"Stranger Truths," ISBN 0-87338-833-x, is available by accessing The Kent State University website: www.kentstateuniversitypress.com.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, June 12, 2005, No. 24, Vol. LXXIII

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