Thomas Lux Writing on Ilya Kaminksky: Poet/Poet

We can't reprint it here -- the article is long, wonderful, and is the cover story for the San Diego Reader.

http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2008/mar/12/cover

But we can say: Read this!! It may be one of the best narratives on poet has ever written about another. And Kaminsky, like Lux before him, will be at the Frost Place this summer (www.frostplace.org). If you haven't yet heard him read, you have a treat ahead of you. And if you have heard him -- I bet you'll try to see him this summer. I know that I will put this ahead of everything else in my schedule.

From DANCING IN ODESSA:

AUTHOR'S PRAYER

If I speak for the dead, I must
leave this animal of my body,

I must write the same poem over and over
for the empty page is a white flag of their surrender.

If I speak of them, I must walk
on the edge of myself, I must live as a blind man

who runs through the rooms without
touching the furniture.

Yes, I live. I can cross the streets asking "What year
is it?"
I can dance in my sleep and laugh

in front of the mirror.
Even sleep is a prayer, Lord,

I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak

of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say

is a kind of petition and the darkest days
must I praise.

[taken from www.ilyakaminsky.com; also the opening poem in his chapbook MUSICA HUMANA]