Customer Reviews

Night Wraps the Sky: Writings by and about Mayakovsky

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Michael Almereyda turns the clock back to the glamorous days of the early 60s when Russian poet and hero Vladimir Mayakovsky was being rediscovered by a new generation of non-Soviet admirers (among them NY-based "New American" poets Ginsberg and Koch). In Jean Luc Godard's Les Carabiniers, a character launches into a poem by Mayakovsky--a poem which Almereyda, with charming modesty, tells us he cannot identify from the known works of the author. Perhaps Godard wrote it himself in the spirit of the master, Almereyda theorizes. In much the same way his anthology prints the mysterious poem Donald Allen accepted as the work of Frank O'Hara, "A True Account of Talking to the Sun at Fire Island," although some recent scholars have concluded that the poem might be more wisely attributed to "School of Frank O'Hara," but everyone's a prankster. Almereyda, one of the greatest film directors of our time, is a sharp prose stylist as well, and some of the book's more interesting passages describe his own long involvement with the Russian language and in particular, with Mayakovsky's passionate conviction.

I came to this book with good intentions, but I found myself unable to break through the fantastic book design into any meaningful connection with the work. "Screaming My Head Off," in Ron Padgett's translation, brings the reader right into Mayakovsky's inventive, transactional world, where everything is a challenge, where everything is bigger than one might have supposed, brightly colored and filled with the vulgarity of the people. A few other translators do the man justice--I particularly enjoyed the casual surrealism of Matvei Yankelevich's version of "A Cloud in Pants." "Listen to me, mister god,/ aren't you bored/ of every day dabbing your eyes grown over-blind/ into that cloudy fruit-concentrate gel?" But I wonder if this English represents a faithful version of the Russian, or do people actually use the locution, "bored of every day dabbing your eyes grown over-blind" here, there, or in 1914 or whenever. I'm afraid that in editing this generous labor of love, Almereyda's pixellative chug-alug of history, politics and art ensures that everything takes a backseat to vigor. Those iconic Rodchenko photographs of crewcut Mayakovsky guarantee a good time, but I got confused often and wanted to slow down and catch my breath, let the scraps of biography fall to the ground where I could examine them one by one.

I'm in tears after reading this book. Tears of gratefulness for having experienced something so powerful and tears of sadness for how it all ended. What an unbelievable talent Mayakovsky was! I had heard of him before but honestly knew very little about him prior to reading this book. I'm so inspired by his creativity and the fascinating people in his life that I've gone out and bought several other books to explore things further. I really loved how the book was laid out. The photographs were fantastic and the mixture of his poems amidst biographical sketches from those who knew him was a brilliant way to present everything. Some may think it a bit chaotic but I thought the presentation was very original and gave the book a real energy which I think Mayakovsky himself would have admired. The pages really fly out at you and you can't put it down. I really can't say enough great things about this book it has been so long since I read something I really enjoyed that I am truly grateful to the author for introducing a whole new generation to Mayakovsky. Bravo.

Mayakovsky is not so well-served by this book, in my view. It is chatty, contains excerpts, and has a text running throughout that compares the great figure and poet to a rapper and to Eminem. One can't help but wonder if that is what will inspire readers who are eager to find their way further into the expressiveness and personality of Mayakovsky, into the lifeworld of Russia's revolutionary avant-garde, and who want to read Mayakovsky. Perhaps I was misled. A really solid anthology of his work, translated into English, doesn't seem to exist. "The Bedbug and Selected Poetry" has much more of his work, but I am looking for something more.