Longlisted for the 2018 Read Russia Prize. 'Vladimir Mayakovsky' & Other Poems is the only single-volume selection in English to fully represent the work of one of Modernism's vital literary forces. The poems encompass Mayakovsky's pre-Revolutionary surrealism as well as his exclamatory agitprop of the 1920s, by which time he had become the pre-eminent Soviet poet. New translations of key works are included alongside several poems that have never been translated into English before, while an introduction and notes provide helpful contexts and elucidations. Screenplays, dramatic scripts and advertising slogans give a sense of the unusual breadth and invention of Mayakovsky's project, and his skill both as poet and propagandist. 'A poet needs to be good at life as well', he writes; his job is to 'smooth brains with the file of his tongue'. Womack's translations help to revise the predominant image of Mayakovsky as a hectoring egoist, offering a more nuanced impression of a poet whose concern was as much comradeship and intimacy as politics and posterity: 'all of this - do you want it? - I will abandon for one single tender human word.'
'This exhibition is not a jubilee, it's an account of my work. I demand help - not the glorification of non-existent virtues. That's what we are talking about, comrades, and not about glorifying private persons.' Mayakovsky was a poet, playwright, artist, director, actor, diarist, producer of agitprop posters and advertisement slogans, and writer of articles, essays and speeches. The inherent conflict of his status as an avant-garde communist writer working within the steadily narrowing cultural conditions of early Soviet Russia runs vividly throughout his work, and was a significant contributing factor to his suicide at the age of thirty-six. This groundbreaking collection draws together for the first time Mayakovsky's key translators from the 1930s to the present day, bringing some remarkable works back into print in the process and introducing poems which have never before been translated.The radical scope of its representation makes for the most comprehensive account of Mayakovsky's work to date - an account which charts not only the extraordinary range of his creative output, his rigorous and passionate innovation of language and form, and the intense power of his electrifying live performances, but also the fascinating and turbulent history of Mayakovsky's cultural and political representation in the western world. Edited by Rosy Patience Carrick
Futurist, hooligan, revolutionary, propagandist, lover, clown, martyr, hero--the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was the powerhouse and rock star of Russia's Silver Age. This bilingual edition provides "maximum access" to his best known poems, and features: Precise English translations. Stress marks in the Russian text. Commentary on syntax, wordplay and neologisms. Clarification of cultural, historical and literary references. Essays on theme, persona and poetic technique. This is undiluted Mayakovsky, in the highest obtainable proof for non-native speakers.
Futurist, hooligan, revolutionary, propagandist, lover, clown, martyr, hero-the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was the powerhouse and rock star of Russia's Silver Age. This bilingual edition provides "maximum access" to his best known poems, and features: Precise English translations. Stress marks in the Russian text. Commentary on syntax, wordplay and neologisms. Clarification of cultural, historical and literary references. Essays on theme, persona and poetic technique. This is undiluted Mayakovsky, in the highest obtainable proof for non-native speakers. "Readers familiar with Mayakovsky's verse in Russian will enjoy the poetic wit and insight of Jenny Wade's translations, which also shed light on some of the verbal and syntactic riddles of the original: those seeking to grasp the Mayakovsky phenomenon in English can rely on the supreme accuracy of Wade's renderings, and on her overall treatment of her subject, full of artistic admiration and human empathy-yet also distinguished by a critical distance necessary for any real understanding." -Anna Muza, Senior Lecturer, Slavic Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley "'To all of you...I raise my skull, filled with poetry...' In Jenny Wade's masterful translation, with palpable notes, Mayakovsky Maximum Access, what we have is, not only a sensitive, lyrical, down-to-earth reading of a poet who frequented rhyme in his own lyrical, at times, harsh and raw work, but also continual "instructions" on how to enter into this master poet/playwright's work. The book is bilingual and thus open to further interpretation for those who frequent both languages. Pick up this book & fill your skull." -steve dalachinsky, author of The Final Nite "The Russian poet, Mayakovsky, is central to his country's literary history. Jenny Wade's translations of his marvelous, yet down to earth, poems are a marvel in themselves. This is an important book-highly recommended " -Ron Kolm, author of Night Shift "Jenny Wade has superbly captured the plangent Whitmanesque rhythms of Mayakovsky, written on the wing, on the fly, on the loose, 'a cloud in trousers.' The clarity of Wade's supple translation and explanatory footnotes make this a timely addition to the canon of poetic voices that now, more than ever, need to be heard." -Max Blagg, author of Slow Dazzle
This selection of Mayakovsky's work covers his entire career—from the earliest pre-revolutionary lyrics to a poem found in a notebook after his suicide. Splendid translations of the poems, with the Russian on a facing page, and a fresh, colloquial version of Mayakovsky's dramatic masterpiece, The Bedbug.
James McGavran’s new translation of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poetry is the first to fully capture the Futurist and Soviet agitprop artist’s voice. Because of his work as a propagandist for the Soviet regime, and because of his posthumous enshrinement by Stalin as “the best and most talented poet of our Soviet epoch,” Mayakovsky has most often been interpreted—and translated—within a political context. McGavran’s translations reveal a more nuanced poet who possessed a passion for word creation and linguistic manipulation. Mayakovsky’s bombastic metaphors and formal élan shine through in these translations, and McGavran’s commentary provides vital information on Mayakovsky, illuminating the poet’s many references to the Russian literary canon, his contemporaries in art and culture, and Soviet figures and policies.
"what a poetand the clear water is thickwith bloody blows on its head.I embraced a cloudBut when I soaredit rained."—Frank O’Hara, “Mayakovsky” (1954)Mayakovsky's is one of the most compelling voices in twentieth-century Russian poetry. Born in 1893, he joined the Futurist movement in 1912 and soon established himself as one of Russia's major poets. In 1917, he rallied to the Russian Revolution and remained the indisputable leader of its artistic avant-garde until his suicide in 1930.Many of the poems in this book are translated for the first time into English. Accompanying the poems are rare drawings and lithographs by Mayakovsky and his circle, found in private collections of futurist books.
Vladimir Mayakovsky was one of the towering literary figures of pre- and post-revolutionary Russia, speaking as much to the working man (he often employed the rough talk of the streets and revolutionary rhetoric in his poetry) as to other poets (his creative fascination with sound and form, linguistic metamorphosis and variation made him a sort of 'poet's poet', the doyen, if not the envy, of his contemporaries, Pasternak among them). His poetry, influenced by Whitman and Verhaeren and strangely akin to modern rock poetry in its erotic thrust, bluesy complaints and cries of pain, not to mention its sardonic humour, is at once aggressive, mocking and tender, and often fantastic or grotesque. Pro Eto - That's What is a long love poem detailing the pain and suffering inflicted on the poet by his lover and her final rejection of him. But as well as being an agonising parable of separation and betrayal, it is also a political work, highly critical of Lenin's reforms of Soviet Socialism. The publication of That's What is something of a landmark for not only is this the first time that this seminal work has appeared in its entirety in translation, but it is illustrated with the 11 inspired photomontages that Alexander Rodchenko designed to interleave and illuminate the text, illustrations which inaugurate a world of new possibilities in combining verbal and visual forms of expression and which are reproduced in colour (as originally conceived) for the first time.
