Drach Ivan.Sunflower: Poems.Kyiv, 1985

Ivan Drach. Sunflower: Poems / Foreword by M. Slaboshpytskyi.

Kyiv: Molod Publishing House of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, 1985. — Ill.

In a publisher's hardback binding, covered in grey cloth-like material, with dust jacket: on the front cover — a graphic portrait of the poet, composed of horizontal black strokes, the author's name in black, the title in red. On the frontispiece — a sun with splayed rays riding a bicycle, with full-page black-and-white illustrations in the text. The dust jacket is yellowed, with creases along the folds; at the bottom of the front cover near the spine, a piece of paper is torn away, through which the binding is visible; the back cover has stains and streaks, a tear at the top center, and a frayed bottom edge and corner. The paper of the block is evenly yellowed, the block is tight, the text is clean. Condition: good.

Lifetime edition.

INFORMATION

"Sunflower" of 1985 is not a reissue of the debut collection of 1962, but a selection: as stated in the annotation on the verso of the title page, it includes the best poems and poetic cycles from many of the author's books. The title was given by "Ballad of the Sunflower" — a classic poem about a boy who saw the sun on a bicycle and forever froze into a sunflower; in the book, the ballad is on p. 17 opposite a full-page illustration, and its sun-cyclist has moved to the frontispiece. Nearby — "Letter to the Kalyna Left on the Native Meadow in Teližynci", "Picasso's Tear", "The Death of Shevchenko", "John Steinbeck in the Taras Shevchenko Museum", "The Handkerchief of Maria Zankovetska, Gifted by Leo Tolstoy", "Odysseus's Confession".

Ivan Drach (1936–2018) — poet, film dramatist, and public figure, one of the leading Sixtiers. Born in Teližynci in the Kyiv region; his poem-tragedy "Knife in the Sun" (1961) and first collection "Sunflower" (1962) opened a new, metaphorical, and intellectual poetics. Laureate of the State Prize of the Ukrainian SSR named after T. G. Shevchenko and the State Prize of the USSR, in 1989 he became the first chairman of the People's Movement of Ukraine.

The book was published by Kyiv's "Molod" with a foreword by critic Mykhailo Slaboshpytskyi "The Force Field of Poetry", which begins precisely with "Letter to the Kalyna" and shows how the poet, two decades later, returns to the image of his scandalous poem "Kalyna". The annotation on the verso of the title page, according to the publishing practice of the time, is provided in Russian.