“Yaryna Chornohuz’s poems are sober astonishments as they witness war and death and survival—in the illegal assault on Ukraine by Putin’s Russia. From her vantage as a soldier, she writes about the bizarre and the daily with remarkable poise. She finds an equilibrium between her own idiosyncratic voice and the clarity of image, the complexity of parable and arresting psychological insights. The pure clear word of Szymborska and Darwish come to mind, but Chornohuz’s voice is singular in its
transformative power. Her act of imagination is poetry’s triumph. Out of darkness she has created something new. Pass this book on to others.”
Nobody’s Saffron
by Yaryna Chornohuz
tr. by Amelia Glaser
Yaryna Chornohuz’s stunning new book, Nobody’s Saffron —her second to be translated into English by Amelia Glaser—invites readers to overhear the poet grappling with an almost unbearable challenge: how to stay human under extreme circumstances few of us can imagine. “So here is humanity’s paradox: / that some stand still before / another life in another’s body, / ready at any moment to give their life.” Active military since before Russia’s full-scale war began, first as a medic, later as a drone operator, Chornohuz writes for her comrades in arms, dead and living. But she also writes of her daughter in Kyiv, whose future she is defending: “when it comes time to part with my daughter /(the moment of the next return to the front), / I dream of a religion with parables and symbols / to take the pain out of parting.” Writing from the front lines, Chornohuz’s poetry can be read as missives to those who have not experienced war close up, and to those future generations who, she hopes, will know a sovereign thriving Ukraine: “greetings to you from my time, / to those born after my death, / from a time so / red black, gray, white-that in truth it can no longer describe itself.” Featured in both The New Yorker and The New York Times, Yaryna Chornohuz, a poet of indelible strength and insight, has produced a book destined to become a classic.
“Yaryna Chornohuz fixes her gaze on the abyss and does not break. These poems, written at the very edge of human experience, are biting and exquisite.”
—Marci Shore, The Ukrainian Night
Yaryna Chornohuz’s stunning new book, Nobody’s Saffron —her second to be translated into English by Amelia Glaser—invites readers to overhear the poet grappling with an almost unbearable challenge: how to stay human under extreme circumstances few of us can imagine. “So here is humanity’s paradox: / that some stand still before / another life in another’s body, / ready at any moment to give their life.” Active military since before Russia’s full-scale war began, first as a medic, later as a drone operator, Chornohuz writes for her comrades in arms, dead and living. But she also writes of her daughter in Kyiv, whose future she is defending: “when it comes time to part with my daughter /(the moment of the next return to the front), / I dream of a religion with parables and symbols / to take the pain out of parting.” Writing from the front lines, Chornohuz’s poetry can be read as missives to those who have not experienced war close up, and to those future generations who, she hopes, will know a sovereign thriving Ukraine.
Yaryna Chornohuz
Yaryna Chornohuz is the author of three collections of poetry, as well as a senior corporal in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. She enlisted in the Ukrainian military in 2019 and served as a soldier and medic in the 140th Marine Reconnaissance Battalion. She was awarded a Medal for Lifesaving in 2022. She is a winner of the Shevchenko Prize for poetry (2024). She has been included in Focus magazine’s list of 100 most influential women in Ukraine. She has traveled to the US to testify before Congress on the need for funding Ukraine’s military defense. She has been profiled in the New Yorker and the New York Times for her poetry, activism, and military service. Before joining the Armed Forces, Chornohuz studied philology at the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Amelia Glaser
Amelia Glaser is a Professor of Literature at UC San Diego. She is the author of Jews and Ukrainians in Russia’s Literary Borderlands (2012) and numerous other volumes. Her translations, from Ukrainian, Russian, and Yiddish, include Halyna Kruk’s A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails, cotranslated with Yuliya Ilchuk (Arrowsmith, 2023), short-listed for The Griffin Prize. She is currently writing a book about contemporary Ukrainian poetry.
