A01=Alina Pleskova
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Alina Pleskova
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=DC
Category=DCC
Category=DCF
COP=United States
cultural heritage
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
Eastern Europe
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_poetry
folklore
immigration
Language_English
mystical
PA=Available
Price_€10 to €20
PS=Active
queer
softlaunch
Product details
- ISBN 9781646052721
- Dimensions: 127 x 203mm
- Publication Date: 27 Jul 2023
- Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Toska derives its title from the Russian word which denotes a melancholic longing without a singular cause, longing for a better world than the late-stage capitalist hell we live in.
Toska explores a sense of rootlessness and a sort of anti-nationalism; how the pervasive sense of being an immigrant or "in but not of" a place never quite dissipates, particularly amid the dissonance and alienation felt within U.S. culture gunning towards a vision of imperialist capitalist white-supremacist hegemony. These poems come to the weary conclusion, time and time again, that sexual liberalism/liberation and hedonism are only one sort of revelation — that this sort of openness and exploration isn't enough to save anyone from despair or the existentially weary feeling of toska from which the title takes its name. But desire is not just Eros — the poems carry a strong desire for a different world, for everyone.
Alina Pleskova is a poet, editor, and Moscow-born immigrant turned proud Philadelphian. She co-
edits bedfellows magazine and is a 2020 and 2022 Leeway Foundation grant awardee. Her chapbook, What Urge
Will Save Us, was published in 2017, and her writing has appeared in American Poetry Review, Thrush, Peach Mag, the tiny, and elsewhere.
