It’s No Good

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Translated from the Russian by Keith Gessen with Mark Krotov, Corey Mead and Bela Shayevich. Edited and introduced by Keith Gessen, IT’S NO GOOD includes selected poems from Kirill Medvedev’s four books of poetry as well as his most significant essays: My Fascism (on the failure of post-Soviet Russian liberalism, politically and culturally); Literature and Sincerity (on the attractions and dangers of the new sincerity in Russian letters); Dmitry Kuzmin, a Memoir (a detailed memoir and analysis of the work of the 1990s Moscow poet, publisher, and impresario Kuzmin, and what his activity represents). This is Medvedev’s first book in English.

Kirill Medvedev is the most exciting phenomenon in Russian poetry at the beginning of the new century. To be fair, that’s not a compliment. It’s a judgment. You get the sense that Medvedev has no fear, and that this fearlessness costs him nothing. Such things are rarely forgiven.–Dmitry Vodennikov