Description
Book SynopsisAvant-Garde Post– follows seven Russophone poets as they reinvigorate leftist art in the wake of state socialism. Rejecting both the Putin regime—with its selective mobilizations of Soviet nostalgia—and Western discourses of liberal superiority, this circle is reviving class-based critique through experimental forms and global collaborations.
Trade ReviewMarijeta Bozovic has written
the definitive study of avant-garde poetry’s role in the leftist resistance movement that has long stood opposed to the Putin regime. Her command of twentieth- and twenty-first-century poetry and politics is extraordinary. -- Marjorie Perloff, author of
Infrathin: An Experiment in MicropoeticsAn informative introduction to two recent generations of aesthetically inventive Russian-language poets, whose works embrace both a politics of resistance to authoritarianism and agitation for social and economic liberation. Writing in the wake of Dragomoshchenko and Prigov, the radical poets at the center of this book are brilliant and necessary voices, who we need to hear all the more in this time of crisis for Russian culture. -- Charles Bernstein, author of
Pitch of PoetryBrilliant and essential. With dazzling insights and vibrant, compelling prose, Bozovic captures the political-aesthetic energy, urgency, and vitality of post-Soviet radical poetics. Her account is at once a literary history of this new movement, a portrait of seven major poets, and a theorization of a new tendency in Russian poetics. It is not only the most important book on post-Soviet poetry, but also the best book I have read on post-Soviet Russia as such. At the same time, it makes a crucial contribution to broader debates about the possibilities for transformative, leftist art across the world. -- Jonathan Flatley, author of
Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of ModernismAvant-Garde Post– is an incisive study of the most intriguing leftist poets working in and around Russia today. Informed by years of research in close contact and partnership with the authors themselves, Bozovic’s work explains how they have renovated traditions of engaged, experimental, and revolutionary culture for a new era. Her examination of these figures, who have worked in opposition to the Putin regime for decades, could not be more timely. -- Kevin M. F. Platt, author of
Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths
