Now That They’ve Hatched

Cover of Vsevolod Emelin’s “Bolotnaya Songs” / Image courtesy of Falanster

Last September, on the eve of the literary award season, Colta.ru ran a piece by Stanislav Lvovsky called “Chicken Count” («Подсчёт цыплят») identifying some of the major Russian poetry works of 2012. Since then, countless other critics, websites, and journals have put out their own lists (like these), but Colta’s was the first one to get me thinking about what the year’s landmark books might turn out to be. I found it humbling that some of the names on their list – even the older poets – were new to me, and I think it’s regrettable, but not really suprising, that many of them are not much available in English translation.

A new book of poems by the late Jan Satunovsky, for instance, has made quite a splash among Russian poetry critics, but I had only been dimly aware of his work before this winter. That’s a shame. I wish I had encountered him earlier; even a cursory glance at his stuff on Vavilon reveals a major poet with fine eye for the absurd. The new book is big – about eight hundred pages – and it is called Poems and Prose on Poems (Стихи и проза к стихам). In the Colta piece, Lvovsky writes, “This volume, when you consider the scale and personality of the author, as well as his influence (though often indirect) on contemporary Russian poetry, should have come out long ago. It’s nice that it finally happened.” But even though Satunovsky was an important modern Russian poet, he is little known here in America. Among the only translations I have been able to turn up are five by Alex Cigale from his “Anthology of Minimalist and Miniature Poems,” including this superb one:

In perfect pitch the outdoor brass orchestra,

the horns in pace with the concert master,

the sound quality ascending to the stars,

violins on key – like on his web the spider;

and swooning couples stride along the street

(as it was written, two of every monster.)

                                                Yalta, Apr. 30, 1974

[Всё в порядке в духовом оркестре, / дудки, капельмейстер — все на месте, / звук отличный, стереофоничный, / паучок на нитке — ключ скрипичный; / и, кружась, шагают пары на бульваре / (всякой твари, сказано, по паре).]

Timur Kibirov (b. 1955)

Timur Kibirov (Dmitry Rozhkov, 2011) / Image courtesy of Википедия

[NOTE: For my own purposes, I recently wrote a biographical statement for Timur Kibirov, a Russian poet whose work I have been translating and hope to publish as a book someday. Since no good bio exists for Kibirov in English anywhere online, I am posting what I came up with here.]

Timur Kibirov (born Timur Yur'evich Zapoev), who ranks among the most influential of contemporary Russian poets, was born in 1955 and began publishing his poems in the 1980s. In the late Soviet period, he was closely associated with underground poets like Lev Rubinstein, Dmitri Prigov, and Sergey Gandlevsky, and critics have often identified his work with postmodernism and conceptualism. Mikhail Ardov claims that “Kibirov has been and remains the best, most talented poet of our post-Soviet era,” and Andrei Nemzer and Mark Lipovetsky call him “the voice of an entire generation.” [1]

Not Just Pretty Words

Image courtesy of Gvideon

I have known for a while about Konstantin Gadaev’s film that shows Sergey Gandlevsky and Timur Kibirov discussing poetry as they drink tea on a Russian train, but only today did I finally get around to watching it. Midway through the half-hour film, Kibirov offers this definition of literature (and by implication, of poetry in particular), which I find compelling:

“В армии я понял, что - может, потому, что впервые на самом деле столкнулся по-настоящему с реальностью ... Я вдруг понял, что вот тот любимый мной ... ‘дискурс’, [то есть,] язык серебряного века, что он не может эту реальность описать. Я впервые понял, что такое ‘литература’, что это - не просто красивые слова, а нечто встреча реальности с индивидуальным языком.” - Тимур Кибиров

     

“In the army I understood – maybe because that was the first time I had really run into reality … I suddenly understood that … the very ‘discourse’ that I loved, [that is to say,] the language of the Silver Age – that it could not describe that reality. For the first time I understood what ‘literature’ was, that it wasn’t just pretty words, but some kind of meeting of reality with an individual’s language.” – Timur Kibirov

The film features Kibirov reading several of his poems, while Gandlevsky acts as interviewer, asking questions on art and politics that prompt Kibirov to reflect on decades of his poetic experience.