Changing the Framework: Oleh Lysheha’s Interlocutors in Western Literature

• In Event: Ukrainian Poetry of the 1970s and 1980s: Towards the Creation of an Alternative Cultural Identity

Abstract

he extent of Oleh Lysheha’s experimentation and innovation is revolutionary both among his clandestine contemporaries, and to this day. The unique quality of Lysheha’s poetry has to do with his concept of the implied audience, his self-understanding as a poet, and his orientation towards a certain poetic and cultural tradition. In this paper, I argue that Lysheha engages in a dialogue with his Western predecessors, most importantly American and English writers and thinkers. This dialogue is evident in the range of topics that Lysheha addresses, and in the formal aspects of his writing that he shares with many of his Western interlocutors. My paper thus looks at Lysheha’s work through the lens of the works of Ezra Pound, D. H. Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, and Robert Penn Warren and how it differs from works that are dedicated to ideologically affirming the Ukrainian national project.

Author

• Oleh Kotsyuba, Academic Studies Press