Lesych Vadym.Selected Poems, 1930–1965.New York, 1965

Wadym Lesytch. Selected Poems 1930–1965 / portrait by Liuboslav Hutsaliuk; cover by Roksoliana Hilytsinska.

New York: Slovo Ukrainian Writers’ Association, 1965. — 211 pp.: portrait. — 22 × 15 cm. — Published with funds provided by Nataliia and Oleksandr Rytsev. Luna Press, New York. Parallel title in English: Wadym Lesytch. Selected Poems 1930–1965.

Cream cloth binding: author’s name, title, and years printed in red on the front cover and spine; illustration of wheat ears on the front cover. The cloth has darkened and shows scattered grey stains, most noticeable on the back cover; the spine is darkened, with brown streaks along the spine and edges of the back cover. The text block is firm; the paper is light and clean; there is a small brown stain on the left margin of the verso of the title page. Condition: good.

Lifetime edition. The book has historical and cultural value and is of collector’s interest.

INFORMATION

The result of thirty-five years of poetic work, collected and edited by the author himself: the final page states that the texts have been checked and, in places, corrected and edited by Lesytch. The book opens with the section “From Early Poems” — poems from the late 1920s and early 1930s, followed by selections from individual collections, including “Conversations with Father” (1957), and concludes with the section “From New Poems and Older Poems Not Included in Earlier Collections”: the poem “On the Death of Tadosya Osmachko,” the cycle “Seven Keys of Divination for All Seasons,” and the triptych “Nykyfor.”

Wadym Lesytch (born Volodymyr Kirshak; 1909–1982) was born in the village of Ustia in the Sniatyn region, studied journalism at the University of Warsaw, and worked as a journalist and art critic. He began publishing in 1929 in the Lviv-based “Literaturno-naukovyi Vistnyk,” “Dazhboh,” and “Nazustrich,” as well as the Warsaw-based “My”; his first collections in the 1930s were published under the pseudonyms Yaroslav Yaryi and Yaroslav Dryhynych. After the war, he was displaced and moved to the United States in 1948. His poetry was discussed by Malaniuk, Antonych, Hordynskyi, and Sherekh.

The book was published by the New York-based Slovo Ukrainian Writers’ Association with funds provided by the couple Nataliia and Oleksandr Rytsev, to whom the author offers thanks on a separate page dated March 31, 1965. The frontispiece features a pen-and-ink portrait of the poet by Liuboslav Hutsaliuk, dated March 28, 1965; the cover with wheat ears was designed by Roksoliana Hilytsinska.