Burst into a derisive laughter,
laugh at me, too, at me as well,
as at a foreign Gastarbeiter –
say, hey, go home, pal, or to hell.

Don’t recognize my sacred talent,
at any cost, no matter what,
just do not kill me – that’s sufficient,
bury me not, bury me not.

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

Dennis Novikov, now recognized as a major poet in Russia, was born and lived chiefly in Moscow, but also spent several years in England and Israel. The intonations of his lyric verse have influenced numerous Russian poets. Novikov attended the Literary Institute of the Writer’s Union (Russia’s top creative writing program) and was the youngest member of the prominent Almanac group in the 1990s, which also included the poets Sergey Gandlevsky, Alexander Soprovsky, D. A. Prigov, Lev Rubinshtein, Viktor Koval, and Timur Kibirov. Four volumes of his poetry appeared in his lifetime, the second with an enthusiastic afterword by Joseph Brodsky. His collected poems are Viza (“The Visa”, edited by Felix Chechik (Voymega, Moscow, 2007)). An annotated volume of Novikov’s complete works, Reka – Oblaka (“River, Clouds”), was published by Voymega in 2019. His poems are translated into English by Philip Nikolayev with the exclusive permission of the estate of Dennis Novikov.

The hand of fate, the hand of Moscow
clenches my wrist too tight all night
until it’s white, until it’s blue
and feels completely dead inside,

powerless over the weightless matches
and unlit cigarette, as well
as over this whole saving stretch of
reality, and life itself.

The Stone Guest’s muscled arm protrudes
from high up, where the shoulder-boards
loom perilously in the clouds
through the balcony’s open door.

Argus, the old imperial guard
Whose heavy steps I hear approaching,
Arrives to discipline me hard
For pacifism and army dodging.

Unable to cross myself, I die.
A shoulder star, five points from hell,
Unblinking, stares me in the eye…
O Donna Anna, my love, farewell!

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

 

*

Dennis Novikov, now recognized as a major poet in Russia, was born and lived chiefly in Moscow, but also spent several years in England and Israel. The intonations of his lyric verse have influenced numerous Russian poets. Novikov attended the Literary Institute of the Writer’s Union (Russia’s top creative writing program) and was the youngest member of the prominent Almanac group in the 1990s, which also included the poets Sergey Gandlevsky, Alexander Soprovsky, D. A. Prigov, Lev Rubinshtein, Viktor Koval, and Timur Kibirov. Four volumes of his poetry appeared in his lifetime, the second with an enthusiastic afterword by Joseph Brodsky. His collected poems are Viza (“The Visa”, edited by Felix Chechik (Voymega, Moscow, 2007)). An annotated volume of Novikov’s complete works, Reka – Oblaka (“River, Clouds”), was published by Voymega in 2019. His poems are translated into English by Philip Nikolayev with the exclusive permission of the estate of Dennis Novikov.

The mid-century was passing, dragging
Along with it – among outdated
And decomposed calendar pages – a secret
Over which some future generations
Of overachievers will keep racking their brains
For a while. The mid-century was passing,
And somewhere there, in a postwar year,
I was sitting in a multicolored satin dress
On a sun-heated boulder by the fence
Of an old industrial plant, my grubby palms,
Joined like a boat, cradling a shiny green
Rose chafer beetle. Everything that is secret
Tickles. O emerald-winged sacred bug,
Enigma of childhood.
The mid-century.
The tiny lane with a mysterious name,
Written as Great Deer Street in the address.
Where have you moved from Great Deer Street
And where is your green secret now?
The mid-century.
Expectations, waiting.
Pelmeni.
Sweet excitement.
Our kids will live under Communism…
If only America would give us peace…
My grandpa’s clinky WWII medals
In a round fruit-drops tin the odor
Of the New Year fir tree, of snow
And tangerines, the adults’ late return
From the theater, the neighbors’ cat
Cleopatra, allegedly imported from Egypt,
And the whole world folded like the palms
Of a child, wherein are hidden our
Early wishes, childish secrets, and the mid-century.

 

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

An outstanding Russian poet, the late Olga Chugai’s work is lyric and innovative. A master of poetic forms, she was an early adopter of free verse among poets of the Soviet period, using traditional verse and various hybrid rhythmic patterns and achieving a distinct voice. Despite completing an advanced course of study in history at Moscow State University, she was denied graduation because she rejected editorial changes to her final thesis (she was asked to include irrelevant quotes from the works of Lenin and Marx). In the 1990s she received a degree in Advanced Literary Studies from the Literary Institute of the USSR Writers’ Union. Her collections included Sudba gliny (The Life of Clay, 1982) and her selected poems, Svetlye storony t’my (The Bright Sides of Darkness, 1995). She edited an important two-volume anthology of Russian poets of her generation, Grazhdane nochi (Citizens of Night, 1990-2), and also translated poetry from several languages. Chugai founded and was the leader of the First Book Laboratory at the Writer’s Union in 1977-90, an organization that facilitated the publication of first books by many subsequently acclaimed new poets, including Ivan Zhdanov, Nina Gabrielyan, Arkady Shtypel, Faina Grimberg, and Arvo Mets. For these reasons Chugai was nicknamed “supplier of genius.” Philip Nikolayev has the exclusive right to translate her poems into English; his translations are published with the approval of the Olga Chugai estate.

I’ll read it thoroughly,
Leafing through unknown faces:
Hello there, you alien and crazy
Capital city!
All are now dead
With whom I would have cared
To form a bond,
With whom I would have been glad
To share
The last piece of bread
Or just sit down and rest
In the midst of this mess.

The city,
Having read me too,
Is bored with me:
I am unable to cling
Admiringly to the glossy,
Advertised spring,
Nor gawk at the enamel blue
Of a Sunday sky,
With its sun but no sign
Of resurrection:

All that is left is the word,
All else is forgotten,
Otherwise Sundays would surely
Be permanently banned
And gone.
But what is to be done
If someone’s bent on
Reinventing
This idle day of spring?

I’ll go into town
In my cornflower blue dress,
Possessed
By the desire to stare
At the Kremlin wall.
I, without any knowhow
On how to kowtow,
Suddenly feel
Like pressing my face
Against the cool red bricks.

………………..

So, all that’s left is to fall
Asleep and sleep all
Through Sunday.
Sorry to miss the glorious weather,
but it’s just one day.
No, sleep all eternity or, better,
Sleep for three hundred years and then come pay a visit
To this location, examine it
With the studious gaze of a tourist.

 

Translated from the Russian by Philip Nikolayev

*

An outstanding Russian poet, the late Olga Chugai’s work is lyric and innovative. A master of poetic forms, she was an early adopter of free verse among poets of the Soviet period, using traditional verse and various hybrid rhythmic patterns and achieving a distinct voice. Despite completing an advanced course of study in history at Moscow State University, she was denied graduation because she rejected editorial changes to her final thesis (she was asked to include irrelevant quotes from the works of Lenin and Marx). In the 1990s she received a degree in Advanced Literary Studies from the Literary Institute of the USSR Writers’ Union. Her collections included Sudba gliny (The Life of Clay, 1982) and her selected poems, Svetlye storony t’my (The Bright Sides of Darkness, 1995). She edited an important two-volume anthology of Russian poets of her generation, Grazhdane nochi (Citizens of Night, 1990-2), and also translated poetry from several languages. Chugai founded and was the leader of the First Book Laboratory at the Writer’s Union in 1977-90, an organization that facilitated the publication of first books by many subsequently acclaimed new poets, including Ivan Zhdanov, Nina Gabrielyan, Arkady Shtypel, Faina Grimberg, and Arvo Mets. For these reasons Chugai was nicknamed “supplier of genius.” Philip Nikolayev has the exclusive right to translate her poems into English; his translations are published with the approval of the Olga Chugai estate.

From Pushkin to Pussy Riot—Russian Political Poetry and Prose, a special issue of Matter guest-edited by Larissa Shmailo and Philip Nikolayev

Preface
Russia, the American mirror — serfs and slaves, manifest destiny, nationalism, strongmen at the helm, revolution and New Deals denied. LGBT outlawed, oligarchs in charge, racisms, religiosities, and misogynies enthroned.

From Pushkin to Pussy Riot, how do we engage Russia and her dead Kareninas, her poetry, her dissent? How does Russia affect us? What is her history and politics, the literature of her culture wars?

Here we address these questions and collude with you with our poetry and prose in translation. As with all oppressed and repressed writers, we write in myth, parable, and slant. And sometimes, we scream, run at tanks, get arrested and do hard time, just for reciting a poem. (This way to the polonium cocktails, ladies and gentlemen!)

Learn from us, American cousins; better yet, join us as we sing from our materialist-consumer-authoritarian lives as we have always sung, to fight and win. We are on the same side, are your brethren with strangely accented polysyllabic names, cry, drink, die the same.

Here are over 30 poets, essayists, and prose writers for your delectation, expanding the word politics to the size of our polis. Let this be a beginning of a new dialogue, a new dialectic and true collusion.

Larissa Shmailo

A special thanks to the collaborative translators and poets of YOUR LANGUAGE MY EAR http://web.sas.upenn.edu/yourlanguagemyear/and the estates of Olga Chugai and Dennis Novikov for their contributions to this issue.

*

Larissa Shmailo‘s new novel is Sly Bang (2018); her first novel is Patient Women (2015, semifinalist, Subito Press/University of Boulder Prose Competition). Her poetry collections are Medusa’s Country (2016), #specialcharacters (2014), In Paran (2009), the chapbook A Cure for Suicide (2006), and the e-book Fib Sequence (2011). Her poetry albums are The No-Net World and Exorcism, for which she won the New Century Best Spoken Word Album award; tracks are available from iTunes, Amazon, Spotify, and other digital distributors. Shmailo’s work has appeared in over 25 anthologies, including Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters (Penguin Random House), Words for the Wedding (Penguin), and Contemporary Russian Poetry (Dalkey). Shmailo is the original English-language translator of the first Futurist opera Victory over the Sun by Alexei Kruchenych, performed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Garage Museum of Moscow, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and theaters and universities worldwide. Shmailo also edited the anthology Twenty-first Century Russian Poetry (Big Bridge Press) and has been a translator on the Russian Bible for the Eugene A. Nida Institute for Biblical Scholarship of the American Bible Society.

Philip Nikolayev is a Russo-American bilingual poet living in Boston. He is a polyglot and translates poetry from several languages. His poetic works are published in literary periodicals internationally, including Poetry, The Paris Review, and Grand Street. Nikolayev’s collections include Monkey Time (Verse/Wave Books) and Letters from Aldenderry (Salt). He co-edits Fulcrum, a serial anthology of poetry and critical writing.