We Were Hateful People

by Michael G. Khmelnitsky

Overview

We Were Hateful People is a collection of poems that traces five interweaving stories, or perhaps one story in five parts.

A man from a faraway land meets an impossible woman on an island. this town is small / and full of curves and hills and rises A man falls in love; a creative union forms, followed by marriage. the night is an orgasm on wheels / festooned with dirt and peonies A man faces the sound and the fury of his own mind, and another's. everything can collapse at any moment / th moist brown earth opens up & eats you A man and a woman suffer; a marital union dissolves creatively. th wife coils into a snake / th mind coils into a snake A man uses his poetic craft to make the island his own.

In these poems, Michael G. Khmelnitsky delves into and confronts cultural and linguistic otherness, closeted queerness, neurodivergence, trauma, relationships, and mental illness. He also pays tribute in content and form to the poetic and publishing practices of the 1970s, from the elegant typesetting of every letter to the exploration of the creation, assumption, and performance of alter and subaltern egos.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781738894918
Publisher:	JLRB Press
Publication date:	04/13/2023
Pages:	120
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.44(d)

About the Author

My name is Lucía M. Po­lis (she/he), but I write under the pen name Mi­chael G. Khmel­nitsky. I am a neuro­queer po­et, trans­lator, and edi­tor. I hold a Ph.D. in lit­erary trans­la­tion stud­ies and I have been writ­ing and trans­lating poetry since 1996.

I was born in Moscow, in the imaginary country known as the U.S.S.R., lived in Israel—during the Gulf War and First Intifada—and in Canada, and then worked in Japan and the United States.

Before the COVID Pandemic, I visited more than twenty-five countries. At any given point in time, I know between three and five languages. I have written more than one thousand poems, some of which have appeared in Uprooted, The Liar, and my poetry collections We Were Hateful People, and The Love of a Good Man.

I live on Vancouver Island. In time free from work, I agonize over the written line, haunt poetry evenings in dazzling dresses, set boundaries, love friends, tend to plants, keep house, take walks, and go on long drives to nowhere in particular.

Editorial Reviews

All poetry is about loss. Even birth itself is loss, "the opening of unforgiving earth," first separa­tion followed by bro­ken dreams, broken friend­ships, broken promises and broken marriages—"what does the grass tell him." [ . . . ] poetry is a logical next step in the equation that articu­lates grief: love equals loss. [ . . . ] For a poet, it is rearranging words in surpri­sing pat­terns, affirmation of life and love as ghosts sneak up on us, the borrow­ing manifested in beauty.

The BC Review - Linda Rogers

A passionate, energetic, defiant, and occasionally ferocious collection of poems about the dissolution of a marriage, sex, the frustrations of selfhood, the limits of language itself. [ . . . ] Khmelnitsky writes sonically, his ear to the page, crafting lines of propulsive sound and fury, and his experiments in forms are eclectic, ecstatic. [ . . . ] Khmelnitsky is a cannibal, feeding on the body of poetry, fueling verse at once hot-blooded and aching with pathos.

Back Cover - Greg Brown