Keynote
Winner of the Academy of American Poets First Book Award, selected by Alberto Ríos
Book Title
Overtakelessness
Subtitle
Poems
Cover Image
- “What happens to storytelling when storytellers are exploded along with their cities? I am grateful to these poems for their refusal to take the easy path of shock value reportage and their willingness to dwell in the silences, and with the silences. Overtakelessness is an important debut.”—Ilya Kaminsky
Poem Excerpt
In bed, leaves whipping the roof hard
as hail, I watch the news on my phone:
A muffled shaky video from Ukraine
like the one shot by my cousin.
A crater
a crater
a crater
a crater
—from “They Began Their Stories ‘When the War Ended’”
as hail, I watch the news on my phone:
A muffled shaky video from Ukraine
like the one shot by my cousin.
A crater
a crater
a crater
a crater
—from “They Began Their Stories ‘When the War Ended’”
Body
Overtakelessness is a powerful reckoning with war, its ruinous proximity to daily existence and the dissonance of experiencing it from afar. These poems trace the long history and the present circumstance of the ongoing and devastating war in Ukraine, a country whose origins far predate Russia’s, despite Moscow’s propagandist claims. Through the lens of the Ukrainian diaspora witnessing the current violence from America, Daniel Moysaenko attempts to square a centuries-old motherland with a newly aggrieved contemporary nation. A third country emerges in these poems: one that, though spectral, exists in a perpetual future, “astounded at what’s left of living.”
In spare lyrics, prose poems, and ravaged blocks of text, Overtakelessness becomes a book of gaps that haunt the spaces between ancient folktales, lost Soviet records, relatives’ failing memories, nationalist misinformation, and the rhythms of Ukrainian speech. Many of these poems are collages mediated by technology, the news coverage of bombings, the photos of soldiers shared on social media, the time delays of Zooming with family—the war experienced firsthand and by smartphone, “its screen a reflective blank, a sky populated by ghosts.” These gaps and rifts argue, finally, that what cannot be held cannot be seized.
Overtakelessness is a moving and extraordinary debut collection.
In spare lyrics, prose poems, and ravaged blocks of text, Overtakelessness becomes a book of gaps that haunt the spaces between ancient folktales, lost Soviet records, relatives’ failing memories, nationalist misinformation, and the rhythms of Ukrainian speech. Many of these poems are collages mediated by technology, the news coverage of bombings, the photos of soldiers shared on social media, the time delays of Zooming with family—the war experienced firsthand and by smartphone, “its screen a reflective blank, a sky populated by ghosts.” These gaps and rifts argue, finally, that what cannot be held cannot be seized.
Overtakelessness is a moving and extraordinary debut collection.
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Praise
- “Daniel Moysaenko forges a razor-sharp balance between the diasporic experience haunted by Ukrainian war stories and the limits of poetic witnessing from a distance. Harnessing poetry’s capacity for intervention and reclamation, Overtakelessness is inquiring, urgent, and intense.”—Valzhyna Mort
- “Through a compassionate gaze and precise language, the poet shapes the unspeakable, creating not only a chronicle of a nation’s suffering but a testament to its strength. This is a vital, urgent work that ensures Ukraine’s story is heard in every line, each word a pulse in the larger, undying heart of its people.”—Alberto Ríos
