The Chaos of Desire

Marin Bodakov

The Chaos of Desire is a collection of poems by late Bulgarian poet Marin Bodakov, selected and translated by Katerina Stoykova. We hope that the English language readers will enjoy Bodakov's minimalistic style—a few sparse words, each integral to building the structure of the poem. Nothing excessive or gratuitous. Yet somehow, the atomic cage of the poem unlocks something inside the reader—releases the trapped energy of unsaid truths.

What Others Say About The Chaos of Desire

Bodakov's poems rank alongside those of his contemporary surrealist masters—Charles Simic, Mark Strand, Octavio Paz, Nicanor Parra. Deftly translated by Katerina Stoykova, each work is spare, sinewy, full of small but powerful surprises that induce you to blink, pause, begin again. These are poems to linger over. Each reading brings new rewards.

—Andrew Merton, Killer Poems

Marin Bodakov's The Chaos of Desire launches a battle with small, powerful poems that span a lifetime. Desire for love, a parent, lost home, yearning in chaos of destruction, the poet searches for meaning. "This book supplies the light," as it spans the evolution of a man facing mortality, seeking inner children, reconciling loss and love. A glorious collection glimmering with images of the sea where peacefulness is sought. Poems to be cherished as it defines, "chaos, which pronounces the unpronounceable" offered with grace and dignity, beauty and mastery.

—B. Elizabeth Beck, Dancing on the Page

In The Chaos of Desire, Katerina Stoykova renders the poetry of the late Marin Bodakov into a spare and polished English. Both he and she have honed the art of brevity and compression. So she is especially deft at bringing him into English. This collection pulls poems from Bodakov's various books to give us a portrait of a poet over the course of a life in writing, a portrait that is also an elegy for a man who cataloged longing and grief, loneliness and loss like few others. And though these poems circle around loss, absence, and failure more than any other feeling, they are not poems that give up in despair. No, a macabre, self-deprecating humor and wit enlivens them. And even more, the voice of these poems are tinged with compassion. Bodakov sings of a body that longs to forgive and be forgiven, "to make peace while we're still here." He sings of a man that seeks friendship and communion, of a son who mourns the death of his father. His poetry is like the "Guileless sky" he writes about, one that "turns sins into mistakes, wine into water. Me into you." Let us sit under that sky for a while and drink the water he gives us.

—Jeremy Paden, Self-Portrait as an Iguana

Passing Manifesto

So many wars where all opposing parties appeal to you
to side with them,
to arm yourself with their outrage,
to adopt their fears.
So many dirty wars
lacking redeeming heroes—
just righteous ones you can barely catch up with.
As many shameful, fake wars,
as all these masterful attempts to derail you
from your own tiny, pathetic war,
from the shrapnel of the buttercup and the munition of the crocus,
to forget that you shoot only towards the sky—
and never against people.

To forget why you are striding stooped towards the lighthouse,
since you have no ship.

Details and Ordering

Publication Date: November 15, 2024
Format: Softcover, 6" x 9"
ISBN: 978-1-961127-11-1
Price: $19.00

About the Author

Marin Bodakov was a Bulgarian poet, essayist, critic, journalist and editor who made significant contributions to the Bulgarian literary community, both with his recognizable poetic style and with his long-term service to the literary life of the country.

Born in the town of Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria on the 28^th of April, 1971, Marin studied Bulgarian Philology at St. Kliment Okhridski University in Sofia, where he earned a Ph.D. and taught creative writing to several generations of young writers. Between 2000 and 2018, Marin was a book review columnist in the national journal Kultura. His column, "Walking on Letters," could be called a chronicle of the publications and releases of notable books in Bulgaria during this time period.

Marin Bodakov is the author of nine volumes of poetry, most recently The Gallery of the Heart: Collected Poems, published jointly by DA and Tochitsa in 2022. His book, Naïve Art won the Ivan Nikolov national book award for 2012. In 2014 he received the Knight of the Book Prize from The Association of the Bulgarian Book. In 2021 and 2022 he was given two posthumous awards for his cumulative contributions to the Bulgarian literary environment.

He is survived by his wife, translator, writer and publisher Zornitsa Hristova, and their two daughters.