Also reading this great anthology of the OBERIU poets (Russia, 1920s & 30s) - which is giving me a clearer sense of what Aleksandr Skidan is up to. I will have to write some more about Skidan here.
From the little I've read so far, the OBERIU poets - Vvedensky, Kharms - are much more than comic absurdists. Vvedensky displays a near-mystical skepticism about language, which seems to have roots way back in early Byzantine-Orthodox theology (though there's nothing overtly Christian or religious about it - he's conceptually, philosophically radical - a kind of extreme iconoclast).
Showing posts with label Skidan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Skidan. Show all posts
2.26.2008
2.13.2008
Thinking a little more about encounter with Petersburg poet A. Skidan.
As we were walking to the car that would take him to read at Wesleyan, he was limping. Had stubbed his toe badly at guest house here in Prov. WC Williams' "the tragic foot" - the goat-limp of the ancient Dionysians. Poet descends into depths - catabasis, or kenosis. Skidan seems like a strong poet who will come up for air.
His poetry is more sublime than beautiful. Violent contrasts, absurd moments, visions of squalor & estrangement.
From a theoretical perspective, Skidan strikes me as a young poet somewhat crippled by postmodern critique. The very fashionable cultural zeitgeist of the day is a fusion of literary theory and left politics. Post-structuralism emphasizes relativism, the dispersal of the subject, the deconstruction of traditional social (power) structures. In personal terms, this position facilitates either the eliding of a privileged background (what got you into college to read those theorists in the first place), or the dismantling of established power relations, in favor of previously-marginalized social groups.
Poetry under this theoretical aegis cannot assert any kind of normative social relations, but only point to their possibility through contrast. Thus Skidan's angst-tinged sublimity (ironically, quite influenced stylistically by Eliot). His poetry is akin to his political perspective - at least based upon the superficial glimpse of it I received during his visit. He displayed a firm rejection of the current Russian power elite, and a demand for human rights and social justice; but his mode of achieving these goals also includes an antagonism toward capitalism and a kind of communitarian impulse, which would unite networks of progressive artists & poets in a kind of renovation of the "samizdat" underground - based in part on the new media & publishing technologies. A kind of New Left new wave.
This is heroic, but seems to me somewhat of an illusion. From the perspective of this non-Russian outsider, anyway (certainly nowhere near the same league of informed participants as is Skidan!) - human rights in Russian society depend more than anything else upon a re-orientation and reform of their justice system. This will clearly only happen along with parallel democratic reforms of their politics. And I don't see this happening based on another wave of collectivism, sponsored by culture workers and the theoretical left. More than anything, Russia needs, I would think, a re-orientation toward protection of the rights of individuals, including propery rights.
I admit this is just the uninformed off-the-cuff reaction of an American - one who would be, I suppose, in American poetry circles, considered pretty reactionary himself.
As we were walking to the car that would take him to read at Wesleyan, he was limping. Had stubbed his toe badly at guest house here in Prov. WC Williams' "the tragic foot" - the goat-limp of the ancient Dionysians. Poet descends into depths - catabasis, or kenosis. Skidan seems like a strong poet who will come up for air.
His poetry is more sublime than beautiful. Violent contrasts, absurd moments, visions of squalor & estrangement.
From a theoretical perspective, Skidan strikes me as a young poet somewhat crippled by postmodern critique. The very fashionable cultural zeitgeist of the day is a fusion of literary theory and left politics. Post-structuralism emphasizes relativism, the dispersal of the subject, the deconstruction of traditional social (power) structures. In personal terms, this position facilitates either the eliding of a privileged background (what got you into college to read those theorists in the first place), or the dismantling of established power relations, in favor of previously-marginalized social groups.
Poetry under this theoretical aegis cannot assert any kind of normative social relations, but only point to their possibility through contrast. Thus Skidan's angst-tinged sublimity (ironically, quite influenced stylistically by Eliot). His poetry is akin to his political perspective - at least based upon the superficial glimpse of it I received during his visit. He displayed a firm rejection of the current Russian power elite, and a demand for human rights and social justice; but his mode of achieving these goals also includes an antagonism toward capitalism and a kind of communitarian impulse, which would unite networks of progressive artists & poets in a kind of renovation of the "samizdat" underground - based in part on the new media & publishing technologies. A kind of New Left new wave.
This is heroic, but seems to me somewhat of an illusion. From the perspective of this non-Russian outsider, anyway (certainly nowhere near the same league of informed participants as is Skidan!) - human rights in Russian society depend more than anything else upon a re-orientation and reform of their justice system. This will clearly only happen along with parallel democratic reforms of their politics. And I don't see this happening based on another wave of collectivism, sponsored by culture workers and the theoretical left. More than anything, Russia needs, I would think, a re-orientation toward protection of the rights of individuals, including propery rights.
I admit this is just the uninformed off-the-cuff reaction of an American - one who would be, I suppose, in American poetry circles, considered pretty reactionary himself.
2.12.2008
Reading Skidan's Red Shifting, now. Very interesting. Kind of existentialist adventure poems, edgy. Poet as peripatetic screw-up. Lots of sharp scenes, acid wit. Cerebral, but the opposite of "meditative".
He told me the other day he's focused lately on different kinds of rhyme & parallelism - but this volume seems pretty much free verse. We talked about the element of improv in composition.
And want to look at the OBERIU anthology published a couple years ago.
He told me the other day he's focused lately on different kinds of rhyme & parallelism - but this volume seems pretty much free verse. We talked about the element of improv in composition.
And want to look at the OBERIU anthology published a couple years ago.
Sensing the contrast in stance & method between Skidan & myself... wonder what listeners in audience last night made of that, if anything.
My older-fellow, genial, maybe complacent "be of good cheer" attitude. A poetics obsessed with pleroma, fulfillment, the poetry as sufficient unto the day and unto itself, the poem as an adequate response to experience, reality.... my cerebral Hart-Cranian vowel-sounding... the voracious hunger for completion, wholeness, unity, affirmation in danger (paradoxically) of draining the drama out of poetry...
In contrast to the younger-man Skidan's poetry of angst, pain & struggle. Literature's absurdity, its wrongness, its in-adequacy... by which & in which it reflects actuality (of suffering, violence, stupidity, futility & struggle) perhaps more accurately... interesting how (in talking to him over the weekend) TS Eliot was major influence. Eliot, the anti-Crane.
This irresolvable binary, an oscillation. Poetry that remains above or unmoved by suffering & experience is really cold & dead, mummified. But then, the poem itself always has the last word.... the subtle poison of long-livingness. We aim to please... and if you don't find pleasure in the poem itself, what's the point? The question is, is it really alive, or just cryogenically maintained (in the library...)
Of course another factor in all this (with respect to me, anyway) is the messianic, Holy-Roller element. I say "be of good cheer" in a metaphysical, maybe apocalyptic sense. & that utopian fire really is in all these Russians, including Skidan - even as it's deflected through hopeless phase shifters. Russians, maybe especially Petersburgers, are very prone to the messianic/apocalyptic mentality. Another thing that links me with the Russians (beside Minnesota birch trees). I'm something of an (enervated, tired) yurodivy (holy fool).
My older-fellow, genial, maybe complacent "be of good cheer" attitude. A poetics obsessed with pleroma, fulfillment, the poetry as sufficient unto the day and unto itself, the poem as an adequate response to experience, reality.... my cerebral Hart-Cranian vowel-sounding... the voracious hunger for completion, wholeness, unity, affirmation in danger (paradoxically) of draining the drama out of poetry...
In contrast to the younger-man Skidan's poetry of angst, pain & struggle. Literature's absurdity, its wrongness, its in-adequacy... by which & in which it reflects actuality (of suffering, violence, stupidity, futility & struggle) perhaps more accurately... interesting how (in talking to him over the weekend) TS Eliot was major influence. Eliot, the anti-Crane.
This irresolvable binary, an oscillation. Poetry that remains above or unmoved by suffering & experience is really cold & dead, mummified. But then, the poem itself always has the last word.... the subtle poison of long-livingness. We aim to please... and if you don't find pleasure in the poem itself, what's the point? The question is, is it really alive, or just cryogenically maintained (in the library...)
Of course another factor in all this (with respect to me, anyway) is the messianic, Holy-Roller element. I say "be of good cheer" in a metaphysical, maybe apocalyptic sense. & that utopian fire really is in all these Russians, including Skidan - even as it's deflected through hopeless phase shifters. Russians, maybe especially Petersburgers, are very prone to the messianic/apocalyptic mentality. Another thing that links me with the Russians (beside Minnesota birch trees). I'm something of an (enervated, tired) yurodivy (holy fool).
Winding down from last night's reading with Aleksandr Skidan, held at Brown's Slavic Dept. Good turnout. Forrest Gander brought his translation class. Mairead Byrne was there, too. Various intriguing Slavists listened in.
A. Skidan a serious writer, well-spoken about his aims & interests. (Looks much younger than his 42 yrs. His features bear a striking resemblance to a young (& healthy) Marsden Hartley, if you can imagine that.) Out of the absurdist/avant-garde/activist wing of Russian poetry - Arkadii Dragomoschenko a mentor & influence, the Mandelstam of "Verses on the Unknown Soldier", OBERIU... he mentioned some other figures who are important to him, but I didn't catch the names. He likes to play with "theory", deconstruction, disassemblng & reconfiguring famous works (Pushkin's poem "The Prophet", for ex.). But there is a strong emotional intensity & emotional/dramatic connection with real people & events underneath the games. Ferocious, ironic; awareness of pain & squalor. Hardship edge of life in Russia. Strong antagonism to Putin & oligarchy/mafia - he is politically active, sees need to revive some of the Samizdat spirit & networks, in a new form.
A. Skidan a serious writer, well-spoken about his aims & interests. (Looks much younger than his 42 yrs. His features bear a striking resemblance to a young (& healthy) Marsden Hartley, if you can imagine that.) Out of the absurdist/avant-garde/activist wing of Russian poetry - Arkadii Dragomoschenko a mentor & influence, the Mandelstam of "Verses on the Unknown Soldier", OBERIU... he mentioned some other figures who are important to him, but I didn't catch the names. He likes to play with "theory", deconstruction, disassemblng & reconfiguring famous works (Pushkin's poem "The Prophet", for ex.). But there is a strong emotional intensity & emotional/dramatic connection with real people & events underneath the games. Ferocious, ironic; awareness of pain & squalor. Hardship edge of life in Russia. Strong antagonism to Putin & oligarchy/mafia - he is politically active, sees need to revive some of the Samizdat spirit & networks, in a new form.
2.05.2008
... thinking along these lines in prep for reading with Aleksandr Skidan next week, & also just finished Nabokov's 30s novel, Glory, in English, & trying to read along in it in Russian, now...
- typical Nabokovian elliptic puzzle-writing (sometimes so annoying - his precise description like a snobbish effete 19th-cent. botanist-dilettante, noting everything he sees through his magnifier-monocle - but then Nabokov turns weakness into strength, as all the quaint details & byways cluster around some plot-labyrinth of tragicomic pathos - sparkling vision) - about a dreamy very young "untalented" Russian emigre fellow, star-crossed in love, at loose ends after college, & venturing incognito across the border into Soviet territory (to his doom) - what he & his would-be girlfriend call "Zoorland"... (ie. Rusland, turned upside-down by the Bolsheviks)
- typical Nabokovian elliptic puzzle-writing (sometimes so annoying - his precise description like a snobbish effete 19th-cent. botanist-dilettante, noting everything he sees through his magnifier-monocle - but then Nabokov turns weakness into strength, as all the quaint details & byways cluster around some plot-labyrinth of tragicomic pathos - sparkling vision) - about a dreamy very young "untalented" Russian emigre fellow, star-crossed in love, at loose ends after college, & venturing incognito across the border into Soviet territory (to his doom) - what he & his would-be girlfriend call "Zoorland"... (ie. Rusland, turned upside-down by the Bolsheviks)
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