34-year-old Kazilynaite is considered one of the leaders of the younger generation of Lithuanian poetry. She has published five books in her homeland and a collection of selected poems translated into English. Last year, her work was included in an anthology of contemporary Lithuanian poetry compiled by Georgy Yeremin.

The poetess works in a style that can be described as absurdism with a human face: "if I lose my hands during a walk / don't pick them up," "people bloom from sadness / while cherries just bloom." Any absurd premise is used merely as an entry point into lyrical experience.

The division of responsibility between the two translators is not clarified anywhere in the book. The translation leaves much to be desired, frequently deviating from linguistic norms and logical coherence. For example: "dogs will freeze forever / whose howl I listened to / having gone to the countryside / on chilling spirit nights." Here, the idiom "chilling the soul" is mistranslated, and the distributive construction with the preposition "on" poorly matches the extended definitions. It should be "chilling the soul nights."

I saw angels with guns in their hands / they sadly looked at the floor in airports and stations. I saw men who considered themselves real / men and women who considered themselves real / women. When introducing themselves, instead of their name, they said / — I am the woman of so-and-so —. I saw deserted villages, forests being cut down, / dammed rivers, and small churches in localities. In the mirror.

Dmitry Kuzmin