“Peace Lilies,” “A Slice of Bread,” and “Waltz” by Elina Petrova appeared in Issue 43 and can be found here.
We’d love to hear more about this set of poetry.
These three poems, unintended as a triptych, explore timeless themes of love and loss.
“A Slice of Bread” is an elegiac yet reserved poem that takes me back to my mother’s final pre-hospice night at home – after failed surgeries, radiation, and vain hope for an American medical visa. Raised in a tradition of expressing love through unvoiced daily care, I wrote this poem as a belated love letter to my mom.
The white canvas of “Peace Lilies” connects my mother-in-law’s celebration of life (right before the big freeze in quarantined Houston) with my mom’s funeral in Donetsk. First snow, an egret, a veteran’s lilies; a timely consoling touch of a neighbor from coalminers’ apartments – the touch incomparably more memorable than the distant eloquence of fellow-poets.
Although “Waltz” has melancholic notes of a late marriage, it unfolds as a life-affirming romance. Once again, I reflect on my “first life” in Ukraine, where my family went through famines and wars, while still being blessed with love. The narrator’s home is not geographical, but rather an eternal place – one with musica universalis to which she “waltzes” with her kindred spirit from the other hemisphere.
What was the most difficult part of these pieces?
For almost four decades I lived in Ukraine, so an American reader may need footnotes that explain certain cultural references. Sometimes basic societal details, which would be superfluous in my native context, build to a semi-journalistic prelude in my English-language poems. Even if condensed, like in “A Slice of Bread” (poor hospitals; deception on all levels, even at the deathbed), such prologues may delay the emotional core of a poem.
The rest of a challenge is just like with any other poems I’ve written in English (a language I began to learn in my mid-30s). In my native language, I took for granted my ability to conjure narrative-free music of prosodies, alliterations, subtle semi-rhymes, and spontaneous discoveries sprouting from words. In English, I mainly rely on the energy of my cinematic narrative.
Recommend a book for us which was published within the last decade.
Despite my Borges-Nabokov-Roth-Brodsky’s writing style preferences, these days I’d recommend the topical chronicles by Ukraine’s must-read novelist, Andrey Kurkov: “Diaries of an Invasion” (2022) and “Our Daily War” (2024).
If you could have a drink with any living author, who would it be? Why?
I’d enjoy listening to the wise insights of Joyce Carol Oates. However, another Old-Fashioned might be more fun with science non-fiction writers – I’m a sucker for tales of neuroscience and popular particle physics from Fermilab.
What are you working on now? What’s next?
Chekhov said, “If you want to work on your art, work on your life.” I’m working on my “second life,” and my current MS is putting down more roots in Texas.
Our thanks to Elina for taking the time to answer a few questions and share these poems. Read “Peace Lilies,” “A Slice of Bread,” and “Waltz” here.
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Until 2007 Elina Petrova lived in Ukraine and worked in engineering management. Currently she assists in a Houston law firm. After her debut book in Russian, Elina published two poetry books in English: Aching Miracle, 2015, and Desert Candles, 2019. Elina’s poems have appeared in Notre Dame Review, Texas Review, Chicago Quarterly Review,North Dakota Quarterly, Southwestern American Literature, Porter House Review, California Quarterly; anthologies by presses of Sul Ross State University, Lamar University and elsewhere. A film presenting her poem at the 2023 Miami Chroma Film Festival won in the category Best Cinematic Poetry.