Nina Kossman

Nina Kossman Poems

Nina Kossman Biography

Nina Kossman is a painter, sculptor, bilingual writer, poet, translator of Russian poetry, and playwright. She is the author of two books of poems in Russian and English as well as the translator of two volumes of Marina Tsvetaeva’s poems. Her other books include Behind the Border, a collection of stories about her Moscow childhood, Gods and Mortals: Modern Poems on Classical Myths published by Oxford University Press in 2001, a bilingual book of short stories published in 2019, and a novel.)

The Best Poem Of Nina Kossman

Layer By Layer

Melt into his joy,
like a fruit in his mouth,

bear his fame
not as a near-misfortune

but as the future
your own cautious name

has awaited.
Swaddled for worship,

become the promise
of wings that took

an oath of staying
affixed to a mummy;

your bone-cage,
supple enough for liberty,

will suffer idolatry
at his hands,

while his thought
is there to unpeel you,

like a rare fruit,
layer by layer,

until you wither into
a semblance of yourself,

a mere phantom.

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