Elementary Poetry by Andrei Monastyrski, Brian Droitcour and translated by Yelena Kalinsky

This is poetry from Russia.

Elementary Poetry by Andrei Monastyrski, Brian Droitcour translated by Yelena Kalinsky is published by Ugly Duckling Presse. This is a Book originally written in Russian. This was published in 2019.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781937027681E12.

Elementary Poetry is a Russian multi-author or collaborative poetry volume from Russia, associated with Andrei Monastyrski, Brian Droitcour, translated by Yelena Kalinsky, and published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2019. It is a Russian conceptual or collaborative volume that treats poetic basics as experiment rather than simplicity. The word elementary feels sly here, as though the book is asking what a poem becomes when its smallest units are rearranged. I would not ask the reader to solve this book before feeling it. The better invitation is to start with the image that will not quite explain itself, then follow the pressure of cadence, silence, and address. For this library, the book matters as more than a representative entry from Russia. It gives English-language readers another route into how poetry travels: not as a tidy report from elsewhere, but as a living encounter with local weather, historical pressure, and the privacy of a voice.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.