Buy Book "I look into your pupils" in Ukrainian

Vasyl Symonenko is a master of words, an artist of thought, a teacher of life. This man is one of the greatest figures of the Ukrainian cultural space. His fate, his deeds, his love for Ukraine and the love of his life are exactly what does not pass by true connoisseurs of poetry, inspiring them with the splendor of epithets and metaphors.

I am very grateful to the Aba-Ba-Ga-La-Ma-Ga publishing house for this wonderful series. This is an extremely handy book that is easy to take with you, to quote wherever and whenever you want.

So, buy it and don’t just read it, but immerse yourself in the texts. They will eventually sink into you, reveal the poet’s soul, and never leave your heart indifferent to such poetry again.

Symonenko was the only poet whom I really, truly, and separately, consciously remembered as a separate poet who touched something in me. Like all children who are busy with a lot of different things, I had neither the time, nor the inspiration, nor the experience, nor the sense of the text to really hear and feel how poems breathe. Especially how Symonenko’s poems breathe and sing. At a more conscious age, now, I have somehow become much more sensitive, vulnerable, and attentive to this.

From school, I remembered either two or three poems that really stuck in my mind, “Passerby,” “Can I” and “Droplet,” and I also remembered how short Vasyl Symonenko’s life was. Honestly, it is the latter fact that comes to mind so often, and it makes me indescribably bitter and sad: yes, he was a brilliant poet, he could have said and written so much more, but even if we close our eyes to this, he was a human being, and he had so much more to do, see, and feel Life is immense, of course, but, one way or another, perhaps he would have been comforted by what he would have seen.

It’s difficult to say something about poetry, to evaluate it, because it speaks to everyone in its own voice, everyone will remember different lines, accents… For me, it is a vague space of vivid images, feelings, vivid comparisons, and just a door to the heart of a person who saw and felt his time, his world, as well as the deep mechanisms of the clock of life, something eternal, and could say about it in a way that will be heard centuries later.

Simonenko is one of my favorite poets. Although, I adore the Sixties in general, and most of all the “most typical” ones, whom everyone probably knows. The collection is very well done and very compact, so you can take it with you to read wherever you want. I think that Simonenko’s poems always have something in common. At the very least, you will find similar artistic means that he uses in his works, except for epithets, of course. You can see a lot of references, metaphors, comparisons, hyperbole, and inversions are very common, but not the kind that you can hear immediately when reading a work.

During his short life, Vasyl Symonenko wrote poetry, the main theme of which is love for his native land, responsibility for his fate, short stories, tried to create a movie script from his student life, became the author of numerous articles, theater and literary reviews, and created three fairy tales for children and adults: “The Crybaby King and the Tickler,” “Journey to the Land of the Opposite,” and “The Fool’s Tale.”

I really liked the book, it’s a pity that the poet lived so little… I recommend it to every lover of poetry. Vasyl Symonenko can stand among the world’s leading artists!

I have loved poetry since school days. This book is a great gift for the soul, which can be read tirelessly in times of sadness and joy. I want to share my favorite passage:

“I will not bow to you gallantly,

I will never pay you a compliment,

I will only look into your gentle eyes,

I will drown my anxiety in them.

And when the gray haze

The long night covers the earth,

My heart longs for you for a long time,

For a long time I cannot sleep.

For a long time white mysterious wings

Wrapped in a haze of visions,

And you stand there, tiny and sweet,

And transparent as the morning shadow.

And burning like ripe cherries,

And burning like ripe cherries,

Your lips, unkissed and sinful,

Eyes that are madly blue.

His poems are filled with depth, his own experiences, and sincerity. Never a person who has not experienced such things would have written poetry of such fullness of feeling.

For me, Vasyl Symonenko is the best representative of the young generation of Sixties poets who rapidly burst into the literary milieu of Ukraine in the 1960s. Each poem in this collection is full of lyricism, humanism, and love-for women, mothers, and the Motherland. “Do you know that you are a human being?” – these words sound like a hymn of sincerity and authenticity of feelings. Unfortunately, in our time, many people forget that they belong to the human race. “Swans of Motherhood” is a work about son’s and mother’s love, about the fact that for our mother we will always be little children whom she never forgets. Love for a mother flows into love for the Motherland: one can choose everything in the world except the Motherland. Once again, these words sound relevant in our time. It seems as if Vasyl Symonenko never left us, as if he is still alive, his every word sounds so sharp and sincere that you are surprised.

And yet, his poetry is full of optimism. Vasyl Symonenko believes in his country, in his people, he is sure that we still have many Columbuses and Magellans, that they have a bright future ahead of them!