Literature, Exile, Alterity The New York Group of Ukrainian Poets [Hardcover]

This pioneering book is the first to present the postwar phenomenon of the New York Group of Ukrainian ?migr? poets as a case study for exploring cultural and aesthetic ramifications of exile. It focuses on the poets diasporic and transnational connections both with their country of origin and their adopted homelands, underscoring the groups role in the shaping of the cultural and literary image of Ukraine abroad. Displacements, forced or voluntary, engender states of alterity, states of living in-between, living in the interstices of different cultures and different linguistic realities. The poetry of the founding members of the New York Group reflects these states admirably. The poets accepted their exilic condition with no grudges and nurtured the link with their homeland via texts written in the mother tongue. This account of the groups output and legacy will appeal to all those eager to explore the poetry of East European nations and to those interested in larger cultural contexts for the development of European modernisms.Long overdue, this book-length study of the New York Group, whose poetry appeared at an important juncture in Ukrainian diasporic literature, benefits from careful archival research as well as from the authors personal knowledge of many of the poets. Encompassing aspects of literary politics, social history, and textual analysis, the book offers sensitive, sensible, and accessible readings of major themes and concerns in their oeuvre.The book is replete with telling formulations, assured historical generalizations, and accomplished textual analyses. Rewakowicz assists the reader unfamiliar with the subject matter with generous quotations, accompanied by translations that manage to be simultaneously empathetic and accurate. A welcome addition to scholarship on modern Ukrainian literature, the book will be of value to all who inquire into literature at cultural and linguistic interstices.Maria Rewakowiczs collected essaysand de-factolӜ