Details of an Hourglass

Details of an Hourglass chronicles the anti-world of Soviet prison camps in miniature-poem reflections. Its author, Mykola Horbal, spent sixteen years in the notorious Gulag system where he suffered under grueling labor, deprivation, and humiliation. Stripping down the poetic word to its bare form, Horbal’s verses are brief, terse, and densely layered with metaphor.

Alongside emptiness, anger, irony, and absurdity, there is beauty, hope, and faith. Horbal describes his harsh reality as a “freeing spiritual journey.” He distances himself from falsehood, servility, and despair by seeking solace and peace in an inner world filled with nature and God’s grace. Today, the Soviet prison system has collapsed, but the need to bear witness to that past is vital. World-wide human rights repressions and unjust incarcerations thrive through both subtle, sophisticated methods and brazen military aggression and brutality. Horbal’s poetry is an aphoristic testament that you can imprison the body but not the spirit.

Volume 13 in the Lost Horse Press Contemporary Ukrainian Poetry Series. Bilingual Edition.