The author of several volumes of poetry in Russian and English, Ilya Kutik is also a consummate essayist in the Russian tradition: aphoristic, allusive, deploying unlikely juxtapositions and poetic measures to arrive at surprising and gratifying insights. In this first English-language collection of Kutik's essays, readers encounter one of the best and most original contemporary Russian stylists.
Acknowledgments Introduction: Smoke, or Notes from the Book
Part I: On Poetry Odysseus's Bow The Tormentor of Life The Short Course of the RCP (Recent Catacomb Poetry) After the Future Swedish Dialogue on Poetry On Reading Aigi Invitation to the Sentimental
Part II: On Swedenborg and Other Matters Verlaine's Violin Longer than a Line, or The "Correspondences" of Hans Viksten Hieroglyphs of Swedish Poetry Stagnelius's Mustache From the Book Accidents, Coincidences, and Correspondences The Poet of Flowers: Linnaeus The Poetry of money The Poetry of Trolls Solitaire of Coincidences: Balthus and Kevin Gustav III Twelve Stories about Swedenborg
ILYA KUTIK is an associate professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Northwestern University and a poet, critic, and translator of Swedish literature into Russian.
ANDREW WACHTEL is a professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Northwestern University. He is the author of Making a Nation, Breaking a Nation: Literature and Cultural Politics in Yugoslavia.
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