{"product_id":"alexander-vvedensky-an-invitation-for-me-to-think-isbn-9781590176306","title":"Alexander Vvedensky: An Invitation for Me to Think","description":"“Pussy Riot are Vvedensky's disciples and his heirs. \u003cbr\u003e      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.”\u003cbr\u003e  — Pussy Riot [Nadezhda Tolokonnikova’s closing statement at their \u003cbr\u003etrial in August 2012]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eA 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.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis English-only edition does not include the poems in their original language.\"…it's high time that more readers pick up on [Vvedensky's] work to break language, to crush understanding so that what is beneath and beyond it can smuggle its miracle into our event-hemorrhaging lives.” —\u003ci\u003eAsymptote Journal\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Unlike the Symbolists, his aim is neither to create an aesthetic paradise nor to suggest or build a bridge to another world—Vvedensky’s is an aesthetics of martyred aesthetics, of not knowing, of the defeat of ‘poetry’ in the service of truth.... His poetic sensibility combines the Russian Symbolist concern for transcendence, God, and ‘other worlds,’ with the Futurist orientation toward syntactical and semantic deformations that draw attention to the artifices of language.” — Thomas Epstein, \u003ci\u003eThe New Arcadia Review\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e Praise for \u003ci\u003eOBERiU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism\u003c\/i\u003e, edited by Eugene Ostashevsky:\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Vvedensky’s poems sear.... Ruminations on faith and loss abound, but there are few\u003cbr\u003emore churning, lacerating and willfully beautiful works in Eastern literature than\u003cbr\u003ethe prose poem “Frother,” in which three sons hover and cavort around their dying\u003cbr\u003efather, trying to ascertain the meaning of a mysterious word and a mysterious truth.\"—\u003ci\u003eThe Nation\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"\u003c\/i\u003e[OBERIU] mounted a challenge in the late 1920s and 30s to 'worldly logic' by questioning and confusing the most basic categories through which the world may be rendered coherent and transformed into narrative. They did so by writing subversive poems and stories, while 'trusting in neither thoughts nor words' (Alexander Vvedensky). They practised a kind of silence through words, wearing various comic masks while pointing to inexpressible realities.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Times Literary Supplement\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"The work of Oberiu is as relevant to our moment as when it was written.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Believer\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \"It's about time . . . the Oberiu . . . became a household name like the Surrealists, Dadaists and all the rest.\" —\u003ci\u003eThe Brooklyn Rail\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \"Oberiu is as relevant today as ever.\" —\u003ci\u003eBookforum\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\"For anyone intersted in Soviet literature, this book fills an enormous gap. It also presents some beautiful, heartbreaking poetry.\" —\u003ci\u003ePW Annex\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \"Highly recommended. All readers, all levels.\" —\u003ci\u003eCHOICE\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ePraise for Vvedensky's \u003ci\u003eThe Gray Notebook\u003c\/i\u003e, published by Ugly Duckling Presse:\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \"These poems do what solid poems should.  They stand against time.\"  — Peter Moysaenko, \u003ci\u003ebomblog\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eGeneral praise regarding the movement Vvedensky started (OBERIU):\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e \"The OBERIU writers are a revelation, an aspect of Russian modernism in the early Soviet period that has been largely invisible to readers in English.”  —Robert Hass\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “OBERIU, sometimes called Russia's last avant-garde, is one of the most intriguing--and little known--movements of the years before World War II. The absurdist poets at its center—Alexander Vvedensky, Daniil Kharms, and Nikolai Zabolotsky—belonged to the first generation of writers to come of age after the October Revolution . . .  Less interested in coining neologisms than in destroying the protocols of semantic coherence and linguistic realism, these poets have produced a series of inventive, free-wheeling, and often hilarious poetic texts in a variety of forms and genres.” —Marjorie Perloff\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"Skirting oblivion, impossibly present, Vvedensky now even exists in English where he rubs shoulders with contemporaries he never knew, echoing the metaphysical side of Laura Riding, the phenomenological bent of Gertrude Stein, and the grammatical play and befuddling repetition of both.\" —Matvei Yankelvich, \u003ci\u003ePoetry Daily\u003c\/i\u003eAlexander  Vvedensky (1904–1941) was born into the liberal intelligentsia of St.  Petersburg and grew up in the midst of war and revolution, reaching  artistic maturity just as Stalin consolidated control over Russia. After  attending a progressive high school, Vvedensky spent a year working at  the State Institute of Artistic Culture (GINKhUK) as a researcher in a  lab devoted to Futurist abstract poetry. Along with Daniil Kharms, he  then became a major figure in the short-lived underground avant-garde  group OBERIU (a neologism for “the union for real art”). Unable to  publish his poetry—by the 1930s there was no tolerance in the USSR for  work of such shimmering invention and provocation—Vvedensky made a  living as a writer of children’s literature. In 1931 he was arrested for  his so-called counterrevolutionary literary activities, interrogated,  and sentenced to three years of internal exile. He was detained again in  1941, and on February 2 he died of pleurisy on a prison train, leaving  behind his wife and four-year-old son. Though much of Vvedensky’s work  has been lost, what remains has established him as one\u003cbr\u003eof the most influential Russian poets of the twentieth century.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEugene Ostashevsky is the author of the poetry collections \u003ci\u003eThe Life and Opinions of DJ Spinoza \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eIterature\u003c\/i\u003e, both published by Ugly Duckling Presse. He is the editor of \u003ci\u003eOBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism\u003c\/i\u003e,  the first collection of writings by Vvedensky and friends in English  translation. Ostashevsky teaches in the liberal studies program at New  York University.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMatvei Yankelevich is the author of the poetry collection \u003ci\u003eAlpha Donut\u003c\/i\u003e (United Artists Books) and a novella in fragments, \u003ci\u003eBoris by the Sea\u003c\/i\u003e (Octopus Books). His translations of Daniil Kharms were collected in \u003ci\u003eToday I Wrote Nothing: The Selected Writings of Daniil Kharms\u003c\/i\u003e (Overlook\/Ardis). He edits the Eastern European Poets Series at Ugly Duckling Presse.\u003cb\u003eThe Joyful Man Franz \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003ethe joyful man Franz                                       \u003cbr\u003emaintained protuberance\u003cbr\u003efrom start to finish\u003cbr\u003ehe never came down the porch                        \u003cbr\u003emeasured stars named flowers                         \u003cbr\u003ebelieved I am you        \u003cbr\u003eaffixing number to time\u003cbr\u003ehumming in rhyme\u003cbr\u003ehe died and was deceased\u003cbr\u003elike the shotgun and the cyst\u003cbr\u003efrightened, he would see a skirt                                               \u003cbr\u003eas he fantasized asleep\u003cbr\u003eand would sail at the helm\u003cbr\u003eto a melancholy elm                                        \u003cbr\u003ewhere squads of beetles           \u003cbr\u003eperformed about-faces\u003cbr\u003eshowed their mustaches to gods\u003cbr\u003epronounced themselves to be clocks               \u003cbr\u003egods howled out of tune\u003cbr\u003eand tumbled down from the moon\u003cbr\u003ethere in luxurious grass\u003cbr\u003ean ant was being stamped\u003cbr\u003eand the glowworm, unkind king\u003cbr\u003elit up a large lamp        \u003cbr\u003esilently the lightnings flashed\u003cbr\u003elanguid animals snorted                                   \u003cbr\u003eunhurriedly growled     \u003cbr\u003ethe waves that lay on the sand            \u003cbr\u003ewhere? where did all this happen\u003cbr\u003ewhere did this location roam\u003cbr\u003eI forgot, the sun will say\u003cbr\u003esinking into the unknown\u003cbr\u003eall we see is the exit     \u003cbr\u003efrom the schoolbag of Franz\u003cbr\u003eof the contemporary of man\u003cbr\u003ethe psychologist of the divine\u003cbr\u003ethis wizard announces\u003cbr\u003ethe party begins\u003cbr\u003eidle stars crowd in\u003cbr\u003eboring people smoke   \u003cbr\u003elonely thoughts run around\u003cbr\u003eeverything is sad and pointless\u003cbr\u003eGod what kind of party is this\u003cbr\u003eit’s the christmas of death or something\u003cbr\u003ehens step around gulfs\u003cbr\u003ethe hall hops with cupids\u003cbr\u003eand the iron steam-engine\u003cbr\u003emeditates upon cow-patties\u003cbr\u003eFranz awoke from his nightmare\u003cbr\u003ewhy are all these things here?\u003cbr\u003ethe valet stood here like a palm\u003cbr\u003ebefore the meadows of eternity\u003cbr\u003eshort as a reed\u003cbr\u003ethe collar sleeps upon a chair\u003cbr\u003ea branch of kerosene\u003cbr\u003eoverlooks the twilight\u003cbr\u003eanswer me wizard\u003cbr\u003eis this a dream? I’m a fool\u003cbr\u003ebut where is that wizard\u003cbr\u003ewhere is the psychologist of the divine\u003cbr\u003ehe counts songs in his sleep\u003cbr\u003egrowing bald as a tree\u003cbr\u003ehe can’t come here\u003cbr\u003ewhere the real world stands\u003cbr\u003ehe calmly multiplies the shades\u003cbr\u003ehe does not shimmer in the sky\u003cbr\u003eTurks give me my carriage\u003cbr\u003ethe joyful Franz called\u003cbr\u003egive me the rocket of Oberth\u003cbr\u003egive me horsepower\u003cbr\u003eI will ride around the world\u003cbr\u003ein this fascinating cab\u003cbr\u003eI will orchestrate a race\u003cbr\u003eof the star with the prisoner earth\u003cbr\u003etouch the ceiling with my head\u003cbr\u003eI’m a bluebird I’m […]\u003cbr\u003emeanwhile out of the acute night                                \u003cbr\u003eout of the abyss of the bad dream                               \u003cbr\u003eappears a crown                                               \u003cbr\u003eand the ramified scythe\u003cbr\u003eyou’re an irate serpent \u003cbr\u003emy childless death\u003cbr\u003ehello Franz will sadly say                                             \u003cbr\u003eeach of your hairs holds\u003cbr\u003emore thoughts than a pot\u003cbr\u003emore sleep than a powder\u003cbr\u003etake out your saber\u003cbr\u003eand slice open my shirt\u003cbr\u003ethen slice open my skin           \u003cbr\u003eglue me to the bed                                           \u003cbr\u003eall the same shall learning triumph                  \u003cbr\u003eI’ll announce as I gurgle\u003cbr\u003eand create a grandson\u003cbr\u003emy substitute in the form of a lamp\u003cbr\u003ehe will stand and glow\u003cbr\u003ewrite essays for school\u003cbr\u003edeath said you are a flower\u003cbr\u003eand fled to the east\u003cbr\u003eFranz remained alone\u003cbr\u003eto contemplate protuberance\u003cbr\u003emeasure stars name flowers\u003cbr\u003ecompose I and you\u003cbr\u003elying in absolute silence\u003cbr\u003ein the empty heights                \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e1929-1930\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e[Trans. Ostashevsky]\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSnow Lies \u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003esnow lies\u003cbr\u003eearth flies\u003cbr\u003elights flip \u003cbr\u003ein pigments night has come\u003cbr\u003eon a rug of stars it lies\u003cbr\u003eis it night or a demon?\u003cbr\u003elike an inane lever\u003cbr\u003esleeps the insane river\u003cbr\u003eit is not aware\u003cbr\u003eof the moon everywhere\u003cbr\u003eanimals gnash their canines\u003cbr\u003ein black gold cages\u003cbr\u003eanimals bang their heads\u003cbr\u003eanimals are the ospreys of saints\u003cbr\u003ethe world flies around the universe\u003cbr\u003ein the vicinity of stars\u003cbr\u003edashes deathless like a swallow\u003cbr\u003eseeks a home a nest\u003cbr\u003ethere’s no nest a hole\u003cbr\u003ethe universe is alone\u003cbr\u003emaybe rarely in flight\u003cbr\u003etime will pass as poor as night\u003cbr\u003eor a daughter in a bed\u003cbr\u003ewill grow sleepy and then dead\u003cbr\u003ethen a crowd of relations\u003cbr\u003ewill rush in and cry alas\u003cbr\u003ein steel houses\u003cbr\u003ewill howl loudly\u003cbr\u003eshe’s gone and buried\u003cbr\u003ehopped to paradise big-bellied\u003cbr\u003eGod God have pity\u003cbr\u003egood God on the precipice\u003cbr\u003ebut God said Go play\u003cbr\u003eand she entered paradise\u003cbr\u003ethere spun any which way \u003cbr\u003enumbers houses and seas\u003cbr\u003ethe inessential exists\u003cbr\u003ein vain, they perceived\u003cbr\u003ethere God languished behind bars\u003cbr\u003ewith no eyes no legs no arms\u003cbr\u003eso that maiden in tears\u003cbr\u003esees all this in the heavens\u003cbr\u003esees various eagles\u003cbr\u003eappear out of night\u003cbr\u003eand fly inane\u003cbr\u003eand flash insane\u003cbr\u003ethis is so depressing\u003cbr\u003ethe dead maiden will say\u003cbr\u003eserenely surprised\u003cbr\u003eGod will say\u003cbr\u003ewhat’s depressing what’s\u003cbr\u003edepressing, God, life\u003cbr\u003ewhat are you talking about\u003cbr\u003ewhat O noon do you know\u003cbr\u003eyou press pleasure and Paris\u003cbr\u003eto your breast like two pears\u003cbr\u003eyou swell like music\u003cbr\u003eyou’re swell like a statue\u003cbr\u003ethen the wood howled\u003cbr\u003ein final despair\u003cbr\u003eit spies through the tares\u003cbr\u003ea meandering ribbon\u003cbr\u003elittle ribbon a crate\u003cbr\u003ecurvy Lena of fate\u003cbr\u003eMercury was in the air\u003cbr\u003espinning like a top\u003cbr\u003eand the bear\u003cbr\u003esunned his coat\u003cbr\u003epeople also walked around\u003cbr\u003ebearing fish on a platter\u003cbr\u003ebearing on their hands\u003cbr\u003eten fingers on a ladder\u003cbr\u003ewhile all this went on\u003cbr\u003ethat maiden rested\u003cbr\u003erose from the dead and forgot\u003cbr\u003eyawned and said\u003cbr\u003eyou guys, I had a dream\u003cbr\u003ewhat can it mean\u003cbr\u003edreams are worse than macaroni\u003cbr\u003ethey make crows double over\u003cbr\u003eI was not at all dying \u003cbr\u003eI was gaping and lying \u003cbr\u003eundulating and crying\u003cbr\u003eI was so terrifying\u003cbr\u003ea fit of lethargy\u003cbr\u003ewas had by me among the effigies\u003cbr\u003elet’s enjoy ourselves really\u003cbr\u003elet’s gallop to the cinema\u003cbr\u003eand she sped off like an ass\u003cbr\u003eto satisfy her innermost\u003cbr\u003elights glint in the heaven\u003cbr\u003eis it night or a demon\u003cbr\u003e                        \u003ci\u003eJanuary 1930\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e[Trans. Ostashevsky]\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"NYRB Poets","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302235885797,"sku":"NP9781590176306","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781590176306.jpg?v=1767721209","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/alexander-vvedensky-an-invitation-for-me-to-think-isbn-9781590176306","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}