It was in 1993 that the family of poet/lawyer Ilya Kaminsky received asylum as political refugees. Kaminsky has never returned to the “city of his childhood” because the country he left exists only in his imagination. Still, he has documented that life and its memories in his first full-length book, “Dancing In Odessa.”

Winner of the 2002 Dorset Prize from Tupelo Press, “Dancing In Odessa” is a joyous achievement. Passionate. Compassionate. Daring in its use of imaginative language. Though the work, written in English, has a deep feeling for a life lived in another country, the words transcend to one universal.

The book opens with “Author’s Prayer,” a work that sets the tone for the work.

I will praise your madness, and
in a language not mine, speak

of music that wakes us, music
in which we move. For whatever I say

is a kind of petition, and the darkest
days must I praise.

Continuing to speak, the importance of words and language, is predominant in Kaminsky’s poems. Perhaps that can be contributed to his early life in the Soviet Union; among other things, his grandfather killed and his grandmother exiled to Siberia. Kaminsky has stated that “family narrative” is not his “thing;” his goal is one of “imaginary memoir,” of being a storyteller and so he writes.

In Praise of Laughter,” he mentions the need for continuance:

all our words, heaps of burning feathers
that rise and rise with each retelling.

And in the title poem:

I retell the story the light etches
Into my hand: Little book, go to the city
without me.

One section of the book, Musica Humana, is an elegy for Osip Mandelstam, a Russian poet who dared to criticize Joseph Stalin in his work. Mandelstam was imprisoned and exiled. The poems are simply delicious in their use of language and imagery.

Once or twice in his life, a man
is peeled like apples.

What’s left is a voice
that splits his being

down to the center.
We see: obscenity, fright mud

and

He believed in the human being. Could not
cure himself
of Petersburg. He cited by heart
phone numbers
of the dead.

“Dancing In Odessa” is a collection of poetry that excited me. Not only due to Kaminsky’s use of the English language, but for the truths he shares. In the section “Praise,” he speaks of his family’s leaving Odessa.

This is how we live on earth, Kaminsky writes. “A flock of sparrows./the darkness, a magician, finds quarters/behind our ears. We don’t know what life is,/who makes it, the reality is thick/with longing. We put it up to our lips/and drink.”

* * *

Reviewer’s note: Some background information about Kaminsky was obtained from an interview by Colleen Marie Ryor, published in “The Adirondack Review.”