Avant-Garde Post-

Reviews / Votes

Makes a convincing case that these poets constitute a 'new avant-garde', not just in their ends, but also in their means, echoing both the political engagement and the collective spirit of early Soviet modernism...All are curious about the potential of other media, all combine the traditions of Russian radicalism with a cosmopolitan outlook, and all leaven their considerable erudition with occasional humour. Bozovic is part of this network and shares its qualities of intelligence and internationalism. -- James Rann * Times Literary Supplement * Marijeta 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 <i>Infrathin: An Experiment in Micropoetics</i> An 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 <i>Pitch of Poetry</i> Brilliant 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 <i>Affective Mapping: Melancholia and the Politics of Modernism</i> Avant-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 <i>Terror and Greatness: Ivan and Peter as Russian Myths</i>