Life is hard, death is distant. Let’s multiply this by two and make it simpler.
New Russian Political Poets
you break off a piece of delicious biscotti / yeah. that would be a lot more realistic / after all you’re so interested in realism
Four Poems
“Your second mouth is celestially gentle.” / I say nothing. I’m Angela Merkel.
The Language of Violence
I see students, fire / /people marching, fire / trembling, feeling, blind / invincible and kind, fire
Untitled
He’s still on top: / spinning out his dialectic / pillorying the fascists / demanding that his books also be burned on the square
Brecht, 1933
Introduction
Poetry after Brodsky
What these poets have in common is a desire to address contemporary Russian realities, and to occupy, through the medium of poetry, a position that has been both the glory and the curse of Russian poetry for the past two hundred years. That is, to be something more than poets.
