Velimir Khlebnikov: A Critical Study

Khlebnikov is becoming recognized as one of the major Russian poets of the twentieth century, having for years been dismissed as a purveyor of unintelligible verbal trickery. This is the first book in English to provide a broad survey of his work. Dr Cooke’s aim is to be both informative and interpretative by mapping out the contours of Khlebnikov’s still largely uncharted poetic world. He highlights the complex relations between the poet and his public, draws attention to Khlebnikov’s preoccupation with the meaning as well as the poetry of language, points to the significance of images of war and conflict in his work, and shows how the figure of the poet-warrior can metamorphose into the poet-prophet. There is also an examination of the vexed problem of Khlebnikov’s attitudes towards his manuscripts and his concept of the book.