Compleat Catalogue of Comedic Novelties

By Lev Rubinstein

Book Overview

Poetry. Translated from the Russian by Tatiana Tulchinsky. Preface by Catherine Wagner. Almost ten years ago UDP published CATALOGUE OF COMEDIC NOVELTIES, a representative selection of Lev Rubinstein's "note-card poems," a seminal body of work from one of the major figures of Moscow Conceptualism and the unofficial Soviet art scene of the 1970s and 1980s. These texts form what Rubinstein called a "hybrid genre" "at times like a realistic novel, at times like a dramatic play, at times like a lyric poem, etc., that is, it slides along the edges of genres and, like a small mirror, fleetingly reflects each of them, without identifying with any of them." As American scholar Gerald Janecek has noted, the texts are made up of "language ready-mades (commonplace expressions, overheard statements, sentence fragments)" and organized "in such a way that we seem to be observing the creation of a poem from raw material."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1937027422
• ISBN13: 9781937027421
• Release Date: December 2014
• Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse
• Length: 448 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.4" x 7.5"