Winter Letters

John Lennon and the author’s father hover over a landscape of legacies, offering inspiration and admonition in Winter Letters, Vasyl Makhno’s new poetry collection. Beginning with what John Donne called “both the year’s and the day’s deep midnight,” Makhno contemplates the snow and despair of an alien and alienating New York, and carries us in a seasonal cycle across time and geography, across world culture, high and low. With stops in his native Ukraine, as well as Germany, Romania, the State of Maine, among others, Makhno introduces us to characters as diverse as old Volodya (the pensioner who came to church in pajamas), and Johnny Cash (who means moola). With a foundation in the international community of letters, Winter Letters reminds us of the universal power of art. Judith Baumel, Walt Whitman Award Winner, former director Poetry Society of America