March 23, 2022
“Cecilia Woloch reports on the Ukraine from Poland”
AND a postscript on the impact of the Invasion of Ukraine on the James Bond Franchise
I’ve been utterly swamped at school the past ten days, but wanted this evening to pass on word about Agni magazines’s publication of reports on the conditions in Ukraine and on the experiences of refugees in neighboring countries.
Agni was founded a half-century ago by a group of writers at Antioch College, including a Ukrainian-American named Askold Melnyczuk. Before you read anything else, though, please attend closely to his statement, which can be found here:
https://agnionline.bu.edu/blog/with-madonna-in-kyiv/
In addition, I would call particular attention to the “dispatch” from Cecilia Woloch, who is currently a Fulbright Scholar based in Poland. Though primarily active in Los Angeles, Cecilia has also spent several decades roaming both the United States and Europe as a poet intent on bringing personal history into dialogue with the ominous aftermath of previous historical devastations. It does not surprise me at all that she is the one poet I personally know at this particular moment who has voluntarily inserted herself into accelerating alignment with the precipice that human foolishness has currently lured us toward. Such proximity is not what I would dare to undertake right now, and I hope that Cecilia manages to return to us safely so that she can bear witness about these events to those of us in Los Angeles who wish for the war to halt and for Putin to acknowledge that he has caused incalculable suffering for which which there is no remediation possible in his lifetime. That the American government and its European allies are complicit in the reprehensible conduct of the war by Russia should not be overlooked. Anyone who thinks that the CIA and the Pentagon are not absolutely tickled at a chance to see how the Russian war machine can perform is totally naive. “Generals and Majors”: It’s time to cue up the classic XTC song.
You can find Cecilia’s report at the following link:
https://agnionline.bu.edu/blog/dispatches-from-ukraine/?fbclid=IwAR0A09dho1x-ExWXzQ9PSeS3uLskGcHoZUaLhnqtOO8oNHqploSJCwQAsDY
Here is a list of the other writers and poets who have contributed to these “dispatches” from the regions most affected by Putin’s invasion:
Olga Bragina
Olha Poliukhovych
Liliya Malyarchuk
Marina Stepanska
Sándor Jászberényi
Ostap Slyvynsky
Halyna Kruk, translated by Lola Caracas
Taras Tsymbal
Yuliya Musakovska
Tara Skurtu
Anton Shapkovsky
Anastasia Levkova
Oleksiy Panych
Kseniya Kvitka
Serhiy Zhadan, translated by Virlana Tkacz
Tamara Hunderova, translated by Virlana Tkacz
Volodymyr Dibrova
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As a kind of gallows humor post-script, I append the following:
“The Silver Lining in the War in the Ukraine”
I suppose there are situations in which no one benefits, but the horror in the Ukraine is not one of them. One would think by now that the James Bond film franchise would have reached its limits of enduring popularity, but Bond appears to be on a roll that will exceed even the longevity of The Rolling Stones.
Come to think of it, that might not be potential future script joke. Imagine this: whoever the next Bond is finds himself pursuing a villain who has purchased choice seats to enjoy the 2,765th live performance of “Sympathy for the Devil,” and Bond finds himself working the way through the crowd, which includes glimpses of all the living actors who have played Bond.
In any case, both the novels of John LeCarre and the James Bond franchise will benefit from Vladimir Putin’s nefarious endeavors in the Ukraine. In the case of the Bond franchise, those who sit down to enjoy the spectacle should first watch a six-hour documentary film that annotates the true production costs of the next Bond installment.
About Bill Mohr