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OUR LIFE Monthly, published by Ukrainian National Women’s League of America JULY-AUGUST 1997 Editor: TAMARA STADNYCHENKO AT HOME IN A POEM by VIRLANA TKACZ It was in March. I sat on the floor of a my friend's apartment in Kyiv listening to Oksana Zabuz- hko read "Through the Looking Glass: Mrs. Merzhyn sky.'' I felt at home with this group of Ukrainians, Ukrainian-Americans, Ukrainian-Canadians and Ameri cans of various backgrounds, come together for this poetry reading. I looked across the room and saw Ulana Holovenko smile. Last summer Ulana took part in our theatre workshop at Harvard and we had put together a playlet called "Gazing at Lesia." Ulana had played Oksana Zabuzhko, and read the poem we were now hearing. She listened intently to Oksana, at mo ments laughing with the others, at moments chilled by Oksana's dramatic irony. As I watched Ulana, I real ized how much she resembled the poet, not only physically, but also in spirit. It was a great pleasure to introduce the two women to each other and soon we were joined by the other participants in the Harvard workshop. Many of the students from Kyiv who had gone to Harvard Summer School came for the reading. Solomea Pavly- chko, the literary critic who taught the class in Ukrain ian literature at Harvard last summer, also joined our conversations. Students told Oksana how our playlet had developed out of an argument in Solomea's liter ary class because, depending on where we came from, we all had such different images of Lesia Ukrainka. So, I suggested that we present some of them in a theatre piece which we could base on Ok sana Zabuzhko's poem "Through the Looking Glass: Mrs. Merzhynsky." This poem asks the question, "If Lesia Ukrainka had married Serhi Merzhynsky, the man she loved who died of tuberculosis, would she have been happy to be occupied with her family and daily chores? Or would she lie awake at night trying to recall why the name "Miriam" seemed so familiar?" (Miriam, of course, was the name of the main charac ter in her first poetic drama, A Woman Obsessed, which Lesia wrote when Merzhynsky died.) Our playlet also included a poem by Lesia Ukrainka, an excerpt of a review by Ivan Franko of her work and some quotes from one of Solomea's articles. Solomea tdld us how surprised she had been to see herself as a character in our piece at Harvard. Her character, "the Historian," supplied facts about Oksana Zabuzhko reads a poem as Solomea Pavlychko and Natalka Bilotserkivets listen. Видання C оюзу Українок A мерики - перевидано в електронному форматі в 2012 році . A рхів C У A - Ню Йорк , Н . Й . C Ш A.
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