Boris Dralyuk

Get it while it’s hot

You’re very kind!

Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood Translation and Introduction by Boris Dralyuk98-page paperback / 5.5" x 8.5" / ISBN 9781589882126Publication Date: 4/21/2026 (available for preorder)The first English translation of a 1953 mock epic o...

Absolutely! It’s my forthcoming translation, available for preorder here: www.pauldrybooks.com/products/sid...

The Jewish Canadian poet Eli Mandel (1922-1992), whose work I’ve only recently discovered, was #BOTD. Scornfully, the speaker of this poem accepts his alienation from the polished forms of gentile culture, then offers us a line of supple iambic pentameter. Lithe ironist indeed…

In this poem from the coming Winter 2026 issue of @nimrodjournal.bsky.social, Rachel Hadas turns to Gerard Manley Hopkins, who saw a fallen world and struggled “to make sense / with visionary innocence.”

Looks like Levi to me as well.

Thank you, my friend!

Thank you! I completely agree!

Sidetracked no more! Alexander Voloshin’s long, lonely wait is nearly over. Thank you, @pauldrybooks.bsky.social!

Here Alexander Voloshin describes the plight of refugees in 1930s Europe. Plus ça change…

Happy Thanksgiving—from Alexander Voloshin and me—to all immigrants acquiring new tastes this year! No one knows better the importance of celebrating despite it all.

How my grandmother, who only learned a few words of English, loved “Turkey Day”…

@pauldrybooks.bsky.social

I needed a rug cleaned in Tulsa, so I handed the thing off to a local specialist who escaped Communist Hungary on foot in 1969, crossing the Yugoslav border to Trieste. After a year in a refugee camp, he flew to NY. Had $20 to his name. You’ve never met a more grateful American.

With over 16,000 submissions received since Nov. 1, we have reached our platform’s limit. We will do our best to respond to everyone within six months. In the meantime, we are preparing for our annual literary awards window, which opens on Jan. 1! An announcement is coming.

Tulsans, brave the rain and come downtown to hear Cynthia Cruz! It will be worth it.

Heck of a year, yes!

From Efraín’s magisterial study “Invisible Work. Borges and Translation” (2002). @eallen.bsky.social

I just learned of the death of Efraín Kristal, whose UCLA courses on Renaissance writing and, especially, on Borges showed me that serious scholarship need not deaden, but can in fact fortify one’s pure-hearted love of literature. As a translator, I found a credo in his work:

I enjoy every single part of the job @nimrodjournal.bsky.social, but this is certainly a highlight. It is a joy to hear our prize winners read!

Thank you, dear Maya!

We came to LA as refugees from the USSR in 1991. Life wasn’t easy, but we persevered and, I dare say, came to contribute something of worth to this nation.

Had I experienced the following when I was a boy, I don’t know what would have become of me.

www.latimes.com/california/s...

Cannot wait to read your work!

Sharing Wilfred Owen's last and greatest poem, "Strange Meeting," for Veteran's Day 2025 (formerly known as Armistice Day after World War I.)

The off-rhymes and quasi-Miltonic half-blank verse point towards a road not taken in English-language poetry.

@bdralyuk.bsky.social

Declan Ryan’s newest in @newyorker.com is the most accomplished poem I’ve seen in a major mag in some time—a poem that dignifies the little intimacies of one couple’s growing bond (watch the rhymes), and in so doing dignifies the inner spaces of all our lives. www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Face to Face with Alexander Voloshin A woman recently reached out to me after finding the snippets of my translation of Alexander Voloshin’s Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood. Attached to her email was the photo above. Her parents, who …

Feed: "Boris Dralyuk"
By: bdralyuk on Sunday, November 9, 2025

Sidetracked: Exile in Hollywood Translation and Introduction by Boris Dralyuk98-page paperback / 5.5" x 8.5" / ISBN 9781589882126Publication Date: 4/21/2026 (available for preorder)The first English translation of a 1953 mock epic o...

Do the old man a solid, pre-order now, and have yourself a ball in April! 5/5 www.pauldrybooks.com/products/sid...

The photo was taken in the last year of Voloshin’s life. He’s the dark, diminutive figure on the right. He looks ill, unhappy. I wish I could tell him that, 75 years after his poem appeared in a small émigré edition, @pauldrybooks.bsky.social would bring it back to life in English. 4/5

Voloshin died in 1960, his wife in 1962. I’d asked every Angeleno émigré I could find whether they had known V., even in passing. None had: it was too long ago. After years of posting pieces of his poem, I finally drew out a witness, made a loving connection—just in time. 3/5

Her parents, who had gone through German DP camps and settled in LA in 1949, befriended V. and his wife, Helen, in the ’50s, frequently hosting the couple at their home. I had, until that day, never encountered anyone who had seen V. in the flesh—not for lack of trying. 2/5

A 🧵 about the magic of translation:

A woman recently reached out to me after finding snippets of my version of Alexander Voloshin’s mock epic of exile in Hollywood, SIDETRACKED, on my blog. Attached to her email was a photo: 1/5

Thank you!