‘The Venus of Odesa,’ a collection of poems by Askold Melnyczuk, published

A new book by American writer of Ukrainian origin Askold Melnyczuk, “The Venus of Odesa: New and Selected Poems,” has been published, featuring poems from almost 50 years of his creative work.

The poetry collection, published by MadHat Press, features works spanning from the early 1970s to the most recent poems. The pieces explore topics of family memory, emigration, love, death, and spiritual awakening.

“Compassion and irony define the human predicaments and historical conditions in Askold Melnyczuk’s extraordinary new collection of poems that spans nearly fifty years,” Peter Balakian, author of “Ozone Journal,” winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, wrote. “His cosmopolitan perspective—one that twines Ukraine and New England—probes time and death, and the relationship between the tragic and the comic with a nimble wit that humanizes. These poems shake you up in the most important ways that poetry can.”

A similar opinion was expressed by poet and essayist Tom Sleigh, author of “The King’s Touch”: “Wised up, amused, disabused, deeply felt, these poems have always taken the potato’s side, the side that stays rooted in the earth no matter what self-righteous abstractions or large-scale truths seem to hold sway at any given moment. Grounded in history, in atrocity, and in a rare sweetness and generosity, his poems are the exuberant record of a truly humane way of being in the world.”

The collection also includes translations of poems by Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko. The book is named after a poem of the same name, inspired by a Polovtsian stone woman from the Odessa Archaeological Museum. The cover features a self-portrait by Ukrainian artist Ksenia Datsyuk.

“Youthful and wise, intimate yet eternal in voice, he is a keen recorder of the sweep of history as well as the sweep-hand of time’s layered implications,” Stuart Dischell, author of “The Lookout Man,” said about the collection.

In his review, The Arts Fuse critic Michael Londra notes that Melnyczuk’s book is not limited to any particular school or style: “In the best sense, ‘The Venus of Odesa’ is a jukebox of one-hit wonders. An aesthetic nomad, Melnyczuk does not privilege any single poetic style. Like a musician unwilling to repeat himself, these pages consist of discrete pieces that formally stand independent from each other. Yet, while each iteration finds its own configuration—metered quatrains jostle elbows with free verse and a prose poem—Melnyczuk’s obsessions evolve but stay fixed.”

Melnyczuk is an American writer, translator, editor, and recipient of numerous honors and awards, including the George Jarrett Award for Distinguished Public Service in Literature and the McGinnis Prize for Fiction.

Melnyczuk was born in 1954 in New Jersey to a Ukrainian family. His literary work is deeply linked to Ukraine. Melnyczuk has translated works by Ukrainian authors and published them in his own literary magazine, Agni. Melnyczuk has also written about Ukraine in his works and has recently become a regular participant of literary events in Ukraine. Melnyczuk first visited his parents’ homeland in 1990.

Melnyczuk is the author of four novels, two of which focus on Ukrainian immigrants in the United States after World War II and their quest for a new identity. His debut novel, “What is Told” (1994), was named one of the New York Times’ most notable books of the year. It was later translated and published in Ukraine in 2017 by Komora Publishing House.

As reported, in early 2025, Melnyczuk won the award for best essay writing from Great River Review and the University of Minnesota.

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