the consequences of the urge to abstraction

 

"Is there a language for falling out of language?”

[...] what happens to language in wartime? Abstractions very quickly attain physical attributes. This is how the Ukrainian poet Lyudmyla Khersonska sees her own body watching the war around her: 

 Buried in a human neck, a bullet looks like an eye, sewn in. 

The poet Kateryna Kalytko’s war is also a physical body: 

 War often comes along and lies down between you like a child / afraid to be left alone.

 text: Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous.

*Ilya Kaminsky

 image: Tyler Hicks, New York Times