cover image The Courage of the Rainbow: Selected Poems

The Courage of the Rainbow: Selected Poems

Bronislava Volkova. Sheep Meadow Press, $13.95 (118pp) ISBN 978-1-878818-20-1

Culled from four books published in Germany, as well as from later poems, this volume introduces American readers to a Czech poet who immigrated to the U.S. in 1974. Having fled her homeland to avoid persecution, Volkova seems to have carried with her a distinct sense of self. One entire poem reads: ``I am here--a sun in eclipse. / I am here--a night that has set its wings on fire. / I flow away as smoke. / Oh, I know . . . '' There is no proselytizing and little anger in her writing, only feminine images of love and loss: ``Promised in marriage / time runs with water in its arms.'' Water, with its ability to assume the shape of whatever contains it, is a recurring image, and an apt metaphor for a speaker desirous of assimilation in her adopted country. Proposing that human nature is best transformed through language, Volkova sets about describing a world in which ``everything is possible.'' This is true at least for the brief duration of these mostly untitled, lyrical and highly readable poems. Translated by the author with Willis Barnstone, Andrew Durkin, Gregory Orr and Lilli Parrott, this impressive collection also includes a handful of poems originally written in English. (July)