Catalogue of Comedic Novelties [Paperback]

Lev Rubinstein (Author), Philip Metres (Author), Tatiana Tulchinsky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 2003

Poetry. Translated from the Russian by Philip Meteres and Tatiana Tulchinsky. A founding proponent of Moscow Conceptualism, Lev Rubinstein, born in 1941, is one of Russia's most well-known contemporary poets. His work, mostly conceived as a series of index cards, was circulated through samizdat and underground readings until the late 1980's, when, along with Dmitri Prigov, he was a contributor to Delo, the first aboveground collection of this group's poetic output. Several of his poems have appeared in American literary magazines, and he currently writes a regular column on cultural affairs in a prominent Russian weekly. This collection represents the wide range of his index-card poetry and hopes to reach the contemporary audience that Mr. Rubinstein doubtlessly deserves.

Product Details

• Paperback: 155 pages
• Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse; First Edition edition (January 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0972768440
• ISBN-13: 978-0972768443
• Product Dimensions: 7.2 x 5.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,027,479 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Catalogue reviews, February 2, 2005

By 

Philip J. Metres III - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Catalogue of Comedic Novelties (Paperback)

Praise for *Catalogue of Comedic Novelties*:

"Lev Rubinstein's note-card poems, here transcribed for the page and imaginatively translated by Philip Metres and Tatiana Tulchinsky, are an eye-opener! Their particular brand of conceptualism has affinities with our own Language poetry as well as with the French Oulipo, but its inflections are purely those of contemporary Russia-a country struggling to make sense of itself after decades of repression. Rubinstein's assemblages are inherently narrative and autobiographical... We can literally read between the lines and construct a world of great pathos, humor-and a resigned disillusionment that will strike a resonant chord among American readers." (Marjorie Perloff)

"Lev Rubinstein is the true heir of the OBERIU artists of the late 1920s. Like his most illustrious predecessor, Daniil Kharms, Rubinstein creates deadly serious, devastatingly funny comedy that incorporates a broad range of literary forms. In the precise translations of Philip Metres and Tatiana Tulchinsky, this witty and elegant work is available to an English-language public in its full glory for the first time." (Andrew Wachtel)

"Lev Rubinstein's Catalogue of Comedic Novelties is a poetry of changing parts that ensnares the evanescent uncanniness of the everyday. By means of rhythmically foregrounding a central device-the basic unit of work is the index card-Rubinstein continuously makes actual a flickering now time that is both intimate and strange. Metres and Tulchinsky have created an engaging translation of a major work of contemporary Russian poetry. In the process, they have created a poem "in the American" and in the tradition of seriality associated with Charles Reznikoff and Robert Grenier." (Charles Bernstein)

At the end of the prose tract Democratic Vistas, Walt Whitman calls for a kind of book that is written "on the assumption that the process of reading is not a half sleep, but, in the highest sense, an exercise, a gymnast's struggle; that the reader is to do something for himself, must be on the alert, must himself or herself construct indeed the poem." Lev Rubinstein's Catalogue of Comedic Novelties is exactly this kind of book. It is interactive, engaging, and sometimes exhausting as a good workout should be. The reader is constantly implicated in the meaning making process of the poem, invited to fill in the blanks, to recreate the context from a series of intriguing and mysterious clues. Reading Rubinstein indeed strengthens one's imaginative muscles, but it is importantly a ludic as well as callisthenic activity. His poems are funny, utterly playful, "comedic" to use his own description, yet not without pathos. (Michael Leong)