The Testimonies of Russian and American Postmodern Poetry: Reference, Trauma, and History [Paperback]

This book challenges the belief in the purely linguistic nature of contemporary poetry and offers an interpretation of late twentieth-century Russian poetry as a testimony to the unforeseen annulment of communist reality and its overnight displacement by a completely unfathomable post-totalitarian order.

Albena Lutzkanova-Vassileva argues that, because of the sudden invalidation of a reality that had been largely seen as unattained and everlasting, this shift remained secluded from the mind and totally resistant to cognition, thus causing a collectively traumatic psychological experience. The book proceeds by inquiring into a school of contemporary American poetry that has been likewise read as cut off from reality.

Executing a comparative analysis, Vassileva advances a new understanding of this poetry as a testimony to the overwhelming and traumatic impact of contemporary media, which have assailed the mind with far more signals than it can register, digest and furnish with semantic weight.

Albena Lutzkanova-Vassilevas groundbreaking study is the first to compare Russian and US avant-garde poetries of the late 20th centuriesRussian Conceptualism and Metarealism on the one hand, American experimental poetry (especially the Language movement) on the other as emblematic of their respective post-World War II cultures. Often considered merely self-referential, both these poetries, Vassileva argues, document the traumatic historical impact of the postmodern ethos in new and challenging ways. Anglophone readers will be especially fascinated by Vassilevas exciting presentation of the New Russian Poetry from Dimitri Prigov to Elena Shvartsa poetry as brilliant as it is germane to an understanding of our own. A fascinating and genuinely original book! -Marjorie Perloff, Professor EmeritalÃ/