Pepsi is the title of a new collection by Kharkiv's noted young
poet Serhiy Zhadan, dedicated to Nova generatsiya (New Generation,
organ of the Ukrainian futurists in the 1920s), stressing that the new
generation of Ukrainian poets inclined to follow the creative tradition
of rebels shot by the NKVD in the 1930s, rather than Soviet official authors.
"We are part of the generation, we cherish it as much as birds do crystal
clear air..." Alas, they appear to cherish not Pepsi, for they are "sons
of bitches raised on cheap port." And rhyming is something special...
This collection is only part of a book published as a Ukrainian-German
project. It includes the poetic series "Letters from Romeo" by Walter Zahorka,
a Czech dissident who emigrated in 1969 and settled in Nuremberg. He is
known more as a political figure. In 1983, acting on behalf of Charter
77, he cycled all of Europe. He refers to himself as a "soldier of the
Foreign Legion of Art in Germany." Small vers libre letters were
translated from the German by Oleksandra Kovaliova and Ursula Kerstan translated
into German the Ukrainian poet. Without doubt, the idea of this two-volume
edition is quite interesting, but the print run (1,000 copies) automatically
categorizes it as yet another bibliographic grant phantom (incidentally,
a very popular publishing genre of late).







