A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails

<p>We act like children with our dead Halyna Kruk writes as she struggles to come to terms with the horror unfolding around her: confused/ as if none of us knew until now/ how easy it is to die. In poem after devastating poem Kruk confronts what we would prefer not to see: a person runs toward a bullet/ with a wooden shield and a warm heart... Translated with the utmost of care by Amelia Glaser and Yulia Ilchuk <em>A Crash Course in Molotov Cocktails </em>is a guidebook to the emotional combat in Ukraine. </p><p><br></p><p>These stunning poems of witness by one of Ukraine's most revered poets are by turns breathless philosophical and visionary. In a dark recapitulation of evolution itself Kruk writes: nothing predicted the arrival of humankind..../ nothing predicted the arrival of the tank... Her taught lean lines can turn epigrammatic: what will kill you will seduce you first or they can strike you like Lomachenko's lightening jabs: flirt Cheka agent bitch. </p><p><br></p><p>Leading readers into the world's darkest spaces Kruk implies that the light of language can nevertheless afford some measure of protection. Naming serves as a shield albeit a wooden one. The paradox is that after the bullets have been fired and the missiles landed the wooden shield the printed book reconstitutes itself. </p>