Vladimir Mayakovsky and Other Poems

by Vladimir Mayakovsky, James Womack (Translator)

Overview

This book is the only single-volume anthology in English that fully represents the scope of Mayakovsky’s artistic work. It includes new translations of his major lyrics, as well as versions of several poems that have never been translated into English before. The predominant image presented in earlier translations and anthologies, of Mayakovsky as a hectoring, ranting poet, is replaced by a more nuanced figure, a writer whose apparent egotism is rather a means of dealing with a hostile world by fitting himself to its size.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781784102920
Publisher:	Carcanet Press, Limited
Publication date:	11/01/2016
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky (1893-1930) was a Russian Soviet poet, playwright, artist and stage and film actor. During his early, pre-Revolution period leading into 1917, Mayakovsky became renowned as a prominent figure of the Russian Futurist movement; being among the signers of the Futurist manifesto, A Slap in the Face of Public Taste, and authoring poems such as "A Cloud in Trousers" and "Backbone Flute." James Womack has translated works by Alexander Pushkin, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Silvina Ocampo.

Table of Contents

Introduction ix

Night 3

Morning 3

Port 5

Street Scene 5

Could You? 6

Me 6

Exhausted Portrait of Spring 9

In Tiredness 10

Love 10

We 11

Cries and Whispers 12

Up Yours! 12

They Just Don't Get It 13

In a Car 14

Vladimir Mayakovsky 15

War Is Declared 34

Mother and the Evening the Germans Killed 35

Cloud in Trousers 37

I and Napoleon 59

You! 62

And That's How I Became a Dog 63

Hey! 64

To Lily, Instead of a Letter 66

I'm Bored 68

Going Cheap 70

A Moonlit Night 72

To His Own Self, with Affection, the Author Dedicates These Lines 73

To Russia 75

My Brother Writers 76

The Revolution 78

How Red Is Your Riding Hood? 84

Eat Your Pineapple 85

Our March 85

Spring 86

How to Treat Horses 86

Ode to the Revolution 88

Battle-Order to the Army of Art 89

The Poet Worker 91

Left March 92

Stunning Facts 94

Vladimir Rich! 95

Vladimir Mayakovsky Rented a Dacha One Summer; You Won't Believe What Happened Next 97

À la Heine 100

Grief 100

A Story about How a Little Old Lady Spoke about Vrangel without Understanding Anything 101

About the Filth 105

All Meetinged Out 107

Bastards! 109

The Bureaucratiad 114

I Love 119

Worker Correspondent 128

A Universal Answer 130

Baku 133

Moscow-Konigsberg 135

Mad about the Movies 139

Be Prepared 142

Kiev 143

Two Berlins 147

Jubilee 149

Hooliganish Stuff 159

Brooklyn Bridge 161

To Sergei Yesenin 165

How's It Going? 171

Conversation with the Taxman about Poetry 189

To Comrade Nette 199

A Letter from the Writer Vladimir Vladimirovich Mayakovsky to the Writer Aleksei Maksimovich Gorky 202

Jew 209

Beer and Socialism 214

Letter to Tatiana Yakovleva 216

'Productivity… ' 219

Monte Carlo 220

Lines on the Soviet Passport 223

I'm Happy! 227

The Witching Hour… 230

Acknowledgements 233

Index of Titles and First Lines 235