Hit Parade by Vladimir Svetlov, Sergej Timofejev, Semyon Khanin and translated by Kevin M. F. Platt, Polina Barskova, Charles Bernstein, Bob Perelman, Julia Bloch, Daniil Cherkassky, Sarah Dowling, Natalia Fedorova, Eugene Ostashevsky, Karina Sotnik, Sasha Spektor, Anton Tenser, Maya Vinokour, Michael Wachtel, Matvei Yankelevich

This is poetry from Latvia.

Hit Parade by Vladimir Svetlov, Sergej Timofejev, Semyon Khanin translated by Kevin M. F. Platt, Polina Barskova, Charles Bernstein, Bob Perelman, Julia Bloch, Daniil Cherkassky, Sarah Dowling, Natalia Fedorova, Eugene Ostashevsky, Karina Sotnik, Sasha Spektor, Anton Tenser, Maya Vinokour, Michael Wachtel, Matvei Yankelevich is published by Ugly Duckling Presse. This is a Book originally written in Russian. This was published in 2015.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781937027568E12.

Hit Parade, by Vladimir Svetlov, Sergej Timofejev, Semyon Khanin and translated by Kevin M. F. Platt, Polina Barskova, Charles Bernstein, Bob Perelman, Julia Bloch, Daniil Cherkassky, Sarah Dowling, Natalia Fedorova, Eugene Ostashevsky, Karina Sotnik, Sasha Spektor, Anton Tenser, Maya Vinokour, Michael Wachtel, Matvei Yankelevich from Russian, reads as a multi-author volume, bringing Russian-language poetry from Latvia into English through a multi-author Russian-language Latvian volume, pop-energy, and post-Soviet performance gathered as hit parade rather than monument. I would avoid treating it as one unified lyric self. The better entrance is through parade, song, crowd, and the noisy pleasure of many voices refusing one official tone, because the book’s force comes from adjacency, collision, and the uneven music of several minds sharing a field. The metadata gives a doorway, but the poems make their own weather once the voices begin answering one another. Hit Parade belongs in the translated poetry library because it treats Russian-language poetry as transnational, performative, and plural rather than nationally simple.

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.