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by Alexander Voloshin (Author), Boris Dralyuk (Translator)
"Dralyuk's translation is characteristically masterful."--University Bookman
A bittersweet tale of war, survival, and the movies
With great wit and warmth, Alexander Voloshin's Sidetracked provides unique insight into one of the major human dramas of the twentieth century: the escape of some two million refugees from the collapsing Russian Empire in the wake of the revolutions of 1917. A former officer in the White Army, Voloshin spent the late 1920s and 1930s struggling to make a living in Hollywood as an extra. His lively yet poignant poem follows his countrymen as they resist the Bolsheviks in Ukraine, suffer crushing defeat, and take flight--first to Europe, then to New York, and, eventually, to Los Angeles. The chapters devoted to the lives of émigrés in Hollywood, which Voloshin knew so well, are a priceless document of the town's Golden Age, as viewed from the bottom up.
"Sidetracked is a masterpiece. Voloshin is a superbly funny and touching poet. Dralyuk reconstructs his life in photographs and in an engaging introduction, and brilliantly renders his poetry of yearning and resilience. This book speaks to all touched by the experience of emigration--that is, all of us--whether nostalgic for blini, pupusas, or lutefisk."
--Jeffrey Brooks, author of The Firebird and the Fox
"Voloshin's bright, ballad-like poem--beautifully rendered into English by the excellent Boris Dralyuk--reads like something from a time capsule. Running from Moscow to Odesa to Ellis Island, its artfully rhyming lines made me weep and smile and sigh. A thrilling read."
--Henri Cole, author of Gravity and Center
Author Biography
Alexander Voloshin (1884-1960) was born in Ananiv, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. His father was a prominent figure in the Ukrainian national movement, and he was equally comfortable in Ukrainian and Russian, adopting the latter language in order to advance his career as a theatrical performer. This career was disrupted by his service in the Russian Imperial Army during WWI and the Civil War. His flight from Crimea--first to Turkey, then, via Berlin and Latin America, to New York, and finally to Los Angeles--is chronicled in his mock epic poem Sidetracked, which he composed in the late 1930s and early 1940s, while working as an extra in Hollywood. Under the name "Alex Woloshin," he appeared in dozens of films between 1927 and 1939, but he ended his days as a taxi driver.
Boris Dralyuk is the author of My Hollywood and Other Poems (Paul Dry Books, 2022), editor of 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution, co-editor of The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry, and translator of volumes by Isaac Babel, Andrey Kurkov, Leo Tolstoy, and other authors. Formerly editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, he is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellow, editor-in-chief of Nimrod, and professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Tulsa.
