Alcestis in the Underworld | signed
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In Greek myth, Alcestis descends to the underworld in place of her husband, a king, so that he may continue to rule the living. After she returns, she and her family live—presumably—happily ever after. But she has seen and learned things no one else knows. Alcestis in the Underworld articulates the poet’s personal experience of civic duty: her life in Moscow as a U.S. diplomat, after growing up in then-USSR Ukraine. Says poet and scholar Christopher Merrill, “Murray expertly navigates the shifting borderlands of 21st-century life, where the line between poetry and prose blurs, foreign policy meets desire, and the inscrutable is our common inheritance.”
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“The myth of Alcestis’ journey to the underworld finds new meaning in Nina Murray’s book-length sequence of poems.… Murray expertly navigates the shifting borderlands of 21st-century life, where the line between poetry and prose blurs, foreign policy meets desire, and the inscrutable is our common inheritance. Every page of Alcestis in the Underworld shines. This is a book of revelations for our time.” — Christopher Merrill, Flares and Necessities
In Greek myth, Alcestis descends to the underworld in place of her husband, a king, so that he may continue to rule the living. After she returns, she and her family live—presumably—happily ever after. But she has seen and learned things no one else knows. Alcestis in the Underworld articulates the poet’s personal experience of civic duty: her life in Moscow as a U.S. diplomat, after growing up in then-USSR Ukraine.
“Murray uses this context to detail her own journeys as a diplomat in Russia after her childhood years in Ukraine. Murray is much savvier than Alcestis, taking the world in her own hands rather than descending to darkness just to be restored by others.” — Washington Independent Review of Books
Praise for Nina Murray’s Minimize Considered
“These poems—this poet—bear the unmistakable stamp of the real thing.” — Roy Scheele, The Sledders and A Far Allegiance
“Beautiful writing, a singular book of poems, rendered in precise, crisp language yet, marvelously, managing to produce a powerful visceral, vivid, heart-bound, near-inarticulable impression.” — Mikhail Iossel, Every Hunter Wants to Know and contributing writer New Yorker
about Nina Murray
Nina Murray is author of chapbooks including Minimize Considered and Minor Heresies, and her poetry has appeared in numerous journals, including Ekphrasis and The Harpoon Review. Her translations from Russian and Ukrainian include Peter Aleshkovsky’s Stargorod, and Oksana Zabuzhko’s award-winning The Museum of Abandoned Secrets. She grew up in Lviv, in Western Ukraine, and holds advanced degrees in linguistics and creative writing. As a member of the U.S. diplomatic corps, she has served in Lithuania, Canada, and Russia.
from Alcestis in the Underworld
soft targets
I cannot help it:
I picture damage
when in crowds
at the check-in line at the airport, say,
a metro station during rush hour
I project the direction of an imagined blast
shatter the nearest glass in my mind’s eye
decompose the scene into carnage
this is also writing: power must
inscribe itself onto a body—
a reporter pulls up his t-shirt
in a cell-phone photo to show the red welt—
a strikethrough mark—left by a whip
wielded by someone dressed up as a Cossack
the singe of contact
is a Rubicon crossed
the broken ribs register on the BBC
the human rights report
one welcomes touch for the memory of it
last week a large horse gently
worked his whiskered lips on my cheek
we are all soft
soft targets
