Sign-In
Cart
Alexander Vvedensky: An Invitation for Me to Think
Paperback
Series: Nyrb Poets
Publisher Price: $16.00
Please select the version of book you would like to purchase.
ISBN10: 1590176308
ISBN13: 9781590176306
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: Apr 2 2013
Pages: 168
Weight: 0.25
Height: 0.40 Width: 7.00 Depth: 4.50
Language: English
ISBN13: 9781590176306
Publisher: New York Review of Books
Published: Apr 2 2013
Pages: 168
Weight: 0.25
Height: 0.40 Width: 7.00 Depth: 4.50
Language: English
Pussy Riot are Vvedensky's disciples and his heirs.
Katya, Masha, and I are in jail but I don't consider that we've been defeated.... According to the official report, Alexander Vvedensky died on December 20, 1941. We don't know the cause, whether it was dysentery in the train after his arrest or a bullet from a guard. It was somewhere on the railway line between Voronezh and Kazan. His principle of 'bad rhythm' is our own. He wrote: 'It happens that two rhythms will come into your head, a good one and a bad one and I choose the bad one. It will be the right one.' ... It is believed that the OBERIU dissidents are dead, but they live on. They are persecuted but they do not die.
Katya, Masha, and I are in jail but I don't consider that we've been defeated.... According to the official report, Alexander Vvedensky died on December 20, 1941. We don't know the cause, whether it was dysentery in the train after his arrest or a bullet from a guard. It was somewhere on the railway line between Voronezh and Kazan. His principle of 'bad rhythm' is our own. He wrote: 'It happens that two rhythms will come into your head, a good one and a bad one and I choose the bad one. It will be the right one.' ... It is believed that the OBERIU dissidents are dead, but they live on. They are persecuted but they do not die.
-- Pussy Riot [Nadezhda Tolokonnikova's closing statement at their
trial in August 2012] I raise[d] my hand against concepts, wrote Alexander Vvedensky, I enacted a poetic critique of reason. This weirdly and wonderfully philosophical poet was born in 1904, grew up in the midst of war and revolution, and reached his artistic maturity as Stalin was twisting the meaning of words in grotesque and lethal ways. Vvedensky--with Daniil Kharms the major figure in the short-lived underground avant-garde group OBERIU (a neologism for the union for real art)--responded with a poetry that explodes stable meaning into shimmering streams of provocation and invention. A Vvedensky poem is like a crazy party full of theater, film, magic tricks, jugglery, and feasting. Curious characters appear and disappear, euphoria keeps company with despair, outrageous assertions lead to epic shouting matches, and perhaps it all breaks off with one lonely person singing a song. A Vvedensky poem doesn't make a statement. It is an event. Vvedensky's poetry was unpublishable during his lifetime--he made a living as a writer for children before dying under arrest in 1942--and he remains the least known of the great twentieth-century Russian poets. This is his first book to appear in English. The translations by Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich, outstanding poets in their own right, are as astonishingly alert and alive as the originals. This English-only edition does not include the poems in their original language.
trial in August 2012] I raise[d] my hand against concepts, wrote Alexander Vvedensky, I enacted a poetic critique of reason. This weirdly and wonderfully philosophical poet was born in 1904, grew up in the midst of war and revolution, and reached his artistic maturity as Stalin was twisting the meaning of words in grotesque and lethal ways. Vvedensky--with Daniil Kharms the major figure in the short-lived underground avant-garde group OBERIU (a neologism for the union for real art)--responded with a poetry that explodes stable meaning into shimmering streams of provocation and invention. A Vvedensky poem is like a crazy party full of theater, film, magic tricks, jugglery, and feasting. Curious characters appear and disappear, euphoria keeps company with despair, outrageous assertions lead to epic shouting matches, and perhaps it all breaks off with one lonely person singing a song. A Vvedensky poem doesn't make a statement. It is an event. Vvedensky's poetry was unpublishable during his lifetime--he made a living as a writer for children before dying under arrest in 1942--and he remains the least known of the great twentieth-century Russian poets. This is his first book to appear in English. The translations by Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich, outstanding poets in their own right, are as astonishingly alert and alive as the originals. This English-only edition does not include the poems in their original language.
Also in
General Poetry
Dante's Vita Nuova, New Edition: A Translation and an Essay
Pitavy, Francois
Alighieri, Dante
Paperback
$33.00
Sounding the Seasons Enlarged Edition: One Hundred and Ten Sonnets for the Christian Year
Guite, Malcolm
Paperback
$19.94
Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching: A Book about the Way and the Power of the Way
Le Guin, Ursula K.
Lao Tzu
Paperback
$18.00
They Bloom Because of You: Poems on the Infinite Love, Growth, and Magic of Motherhood
Urlichs, Jessica
Paperback
$18.05
This Is the Main Event: Discovering the Life You Long for in the Life You Have
Smith, Joshua Luke
Hardcover
$24.70