#RivetingReviews: Stephen Komarnyckyj reviews HUTSULKA by Nicole Yurcaba

Nicole Yurcaba’s Hutsulka – a collection of English-language poetry – grabs you from the first page and will not let you go until you have jumped into the saddle of these poems and ridden them way beyond the Carpathians. The book casually lobs a grenade into many stereotypes of Eastern Europe and blows them apart. The title, Hutsulka, is the noun for a woman of the Hutsul people of the Carpathians, and the cover depicts such a woman, in traditional Hutsul dress, holding a white horse by the bridle. But while Russia tries to denigrate all Ukrainian culture as laughably provincial and peasant, the speaker of these poems is a Hutsul woman proud of her heritage but very much part of a global literary culture. She can embroider traditional motifs, discourse eloquently on Kafka and explore her place in the world with an unflinching emotional directness reminiscent of Sylvia Plath. 

Yurcaba is a Ukrainian American of Hutsul/Lemko origin (the Hutsul and Lemko peoples are two of three ancient mountain tribes in the Ukrainian Carpathians, the third being the Boykos) and the opening poem ‘Ode to a Man Who Will Not Date Me because I Do Not Look Like an American Supermodel’presents her as the inheritor of a long line of Hutsul women: 

I ride horses the way my great-grandmother rode: 

legs & skirt spread my kyptar & vyshyvanka a newly discovered star 

reins in one hand    my other hand on my hip

this sea of mountains the chorus forming 

the song of my self 

The speaker of the poem, a version of Nicole herself, is wearing traditional Ukrainian/Hutsul garments, but the poem in a sense translates these elements into an American tradition, with the metaphor of the mountains becoming ‘the song of my self’, alluding neatly to Whitman. The opening poem therefore translates a Hutsul identity into the American tradition. 

The collection also teases the reader by playing with the concept of the ode, a poem of praise, with perhaps the most famous example being Keats’ ‘Ode to a Nightingale’. The title of the opening poem is obviously scathingly ironic about the unnamed man, who is not even referred to beyond that mention, and in a sense this is an act of poetic revenge. The speaker of the poem will not see him, just as he is blind to her rich, multi-faceted identity. The poem cleverly uses hidden assonantal and consonantal rhymes to carry it through the dangerous liberty of free verse and imbue it with a sense of form. I was particularly impressed by the endings of these three lines, which use this burred rhyme: 

you don’t realize happened. I light 

my great-grandmother’s wooden pipe 

as I stare into twilight’s blurring pink-purple. 

The second poem whisks us across Europe and the Atlantic, depositing us on the North American continent. Who would not like a date with Franz Kafka? ‘Ode to Drinking at QXT’s in Newark with Franz Kafka’playfully imagines the speaker having drinks with him at a bar. 

A friend advises I stay wary 

of the Existentialists. He knows 

damn well I am in too deep 

with Kafka, who sits beside 

me on a Saturday night, 

sipping a cosmopolitan. 

The speaker and Kafka have a suitably profound conversation with the Czech author with the German electronic music group Blutengelin the background. The recent past has seen a revival of eighties music combining Goth and synthesisers; and as well as being a Ukrainian America, Yurcaba is a Goth. Kafka, humorously enough, is as tactile as many a man on a date in a bar after a few drinks, feeling the poet’s leg through her fishnets. 

The range of cultural references in this collection is remarkable, with the ecosphere of the poems, the elements used to create each of their worlds, veering through philosophy and popular culture. Yurcaba’s Hutsul horse has been galloped across a vast terrain. Yet there is an emotional authenticity in the poems that powers this richly textured world. The speaker, like many diaspora Ukrainians, has relatives fighting against what is only Russia’s latest genocidal assault on Ukraine: 

I haven’t heard from my cousin 

serving in the army in two days. The man 

who quotes Kierkegaard jokes about grabbing 

my head & forcing me to look forward, says he’ll 

be gentle the first few hundred times. 

—(‘Ode to a Man Who is the Wolf about Which He Warns’)

There is a confessional element to some of these poems and an unflinching look at the predatory nature of men and the ugly side of relationships that is almost painful to read. And Yurcaba explores many more themes than I can cover in this review – ranging from decolonisation and the legacy of Russian culture to the poisoning of American discourse on Ukraine by Russian propaganda. Everyone who cares about poetry should accept the invitation to run in the wake of Yurcaba’s Hutsul horse and beyond the mountains. 

Reviewed by Stephen Komarnyckyj

 

HUTSULKA

Written by Nicole Yurcaba

Published by River Paw Press (2026)

June 2026 #RivetingReviews titles are available to buy from bookshop.org.

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Paul Burke writes reviews, interviews, articles and features for crimefictionlover.com and crimetime.co.uk. He is editor of the new Aspects of Crime, editor/presenter of the Crime Time FM podcast and is a judge for the CWA Gold Dagger. Paul is a lover of literature in translation and a crime fiction aficionado. His first book Spies on Screen: From Silent to Streaming will be published in September 2026.

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Steve Komarnyckyj is a literary translator, poet and co director of the PEN award winning publisher Kalyna Language Press. He fills the spaces between writing by running around after his mini menagerie of cats and dogs.

Read Stehen Komarnyckyj’s #Riveting Review of NOTHING IS LOST: SELECTED POEMS by Jordi Doce