Orpheus and Eurydice in New York

Olena Boryshpolets' poems cover a vast landscape, from the Ukrainian steppe and the Black Sea, now filled with Russian mines, across the Baltic Sea and across the ocean to the United States. Her journey since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine has taken her from her home in Odesa to a temporary stay in Pittsburgh, where she writes poems that weave in the past and tell us about a terrible war in the middle of Europe, the fate of Ukrainians, and her love for her hometown. Orpheus and Eurydice in New York is a ray of sunlight that brings hope in times of discord and despair. Within each poem are simple, sometimes everyday things that keep a peaceful person on their land when enemy Russian shells are flying overhead. "My mother dances in our house in the Ukrainian village..." she writes. Olena's poems are full of light, color, and love. This bilingual book offers a comprehensive look at her vivid poems.