Description

Book Synopsis
Details of an Hourglass chronicles the anti-world of Soviet prison camps in miniature-poem reflections. Its author, Mykola Horbal, spent 16 years in the notorious Gulag system where he suffered under grueling labor, deprivation, and humiliation. Stripping down the poetic word to its bare form, Horbal's verses are brief, terse, and densely layered with metaphor. Alongside emptiness, anger, irony, and absurdity, there is beauty, hope, and faith. Horbal describes his harsh reality as a "freeing spiritual journey." He distances himself from falsehood, servility, and despair by seeking solace and peace in an inner world filled with nature and God's grace.

Today, the Soviet prison system has collapsed, but the need to bear witness to that past is vital. World-wide human rights repressions and unjust incarcerations thrive through both subtle, sophisticated methods and brazen military aggression and brutality. Horbal's poetry is an aphoristic testament that you can imprison the body but not the spirit.

Details of an Hourglass: Poems from the Gulag

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    A Paperback by Mykola Horbal, Myroslava Stefaniuk

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      View other formats and editions of Details of an Hourglass: Poems from the Gulag by Mykola Horbal

      Publisher: Lost Horse Press
      Publication Date: Publication Date: 30/09/2023
      ISBN13: 9798986571560, 979-8986571560
      ISBN10: 9798986571560

      Description

      Book Synopsis
      Details of an Hourglass chronicles the anti-world of Soviet prison camps in miniature-poem reflections. Its author, Mykola Horbal, spent 16 years in the notorious Gulag system where he suffered under grueling labor, deprivation, and humiliation. Stripping down the poetic word to its bare form, Horbal's verses are brief, terse, and densely layered with metaphor. Alongside emptiness, anger, irony, and absurdity, there is beauty, hope, and faith. Horbal describes his harsh reality as a "freeing spiritual journey." He distances himself from falsehood, servility, and despair by seeking solace and peace in an inner world filled with nature and God's grace.

      Today, the Soviet prison system has collapsed, but the need to bear witness to that past is vital. World-wide human rights repressions and unjust incarcerations thrive through both subtle, sophisticated methods and brazen military aggression and brutality. Horbal's poetry is an aphoristic testament that you can imprison the body but not the spirit.

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