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Vladimir MayakovskyAnd Other PoemsVladimir MayakovskyTranslated by James Womack![]()
RRP: GBP 14.99
Discount: 10% You Save: GBP 1.50 Price: GBP 13.49 Available ![]() This title is available for academic inspection (paperback only).
Paperback
ISBN: 978 1 784102 92 0 Categories: 20th Century, Russian, Translation Imprint: FyfieldBooks Published: October 2016 216 x 135 x 18 mm 256 pages Publisher: Carcanet Press Also available in: eBook (EPUB), eBook (Kindle), eBook (PDF) Digital access available through Exact Editions
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.’
Awards won by James Womack
Long-listed, 2018 The International Dylan Thomas Prize (On Trust )
Long-listed, 2018 Read Russia Prize (Vladimir Mayakovsky)
'This is a gorgeous book. The reader will find it either a seductive introduction or a thrilling reunion. James Womack's translations are bristling with appropriate vigour.'
The Spokesman 'In 'Vladimir Mayakovsky' and Other Poems the poet James Womack has put together the comprehensive selection of Mayakovsky's poems I have long been waiting for. His fresh translation allows English readers to appreciate the non-aligned and passionate personality of the Russian poet. I recommend a few lines twice a day to protect against dry academic writing.' The Times Higher Education Best Books of 2016 Praise for Vladimir Mayakovsky 'The only translations of Mayakovsky that gave any real sense of his brilliance.' Daniel Weissbort 'A genius poet.' David Burliuk 'He had a major gift.' Joseph Brodsky Praise for James Womack In James Womack's 'book of lies', in the court of love and the erotic, where honesty may be a necessary contrivance, the speaker is both accuser and accused. The poems display a wry, mordant romanticism which manages to be at war with itself while keeping a keen eye on the imaginative opportunities. On Trust is a witty, eloquent, troubling collection.' Sean O'Brien 'The first half of On Trust is about a love affair, which is true to all the stumbles of falling in love. An actual affair? Or a vivid thought-experiment? It is both and neither. It is Schrödinger's pussy. It is and it isn't. 'In your park, the wind pushes at an empty swing.' Inventive, clever, funny, rueful, ironic, hypnotised by the erotic.' Craig Raine 'Technically adept, self-consciously ironic, and provocative about the nature of art and the role of the artist... Often I felt as if I was being taken aside and told a joke thatâs ridiculously funny at the same time as being deadly serious. ' Heidi Williamson, Eyewear 'James Womack is another bright young poet... he is capable of lugubrious comic inventions such as 'From the Literary Encyclopaedia', which charts an experimental novelist's doomed career, alongside 'Tourism', a clipped and chilly poem about the export of jihadis to the Middle East... on the evidence of Misprint Womack has scope, curiosity and a refreshing sense of not having foresuffered everything he encounters.' Sean O'Brien, The Sunday Times |
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