Q&A at Lighght Reading with Brian Droitcour
An excerpt from Andrei Monastyrski’s Elementary Poetry (UDP 2019), translated by Brian Droitcour & Yelena Kalinsky, followed by a questionnaire with Brian Droitcour, who read at Lighght Reading: Friday 3/21, 2014 at Berl’s Brooklyn Poetry Shop.
I Hear Sounds (E.P. #5)
1975
[excerpt]
[…]
Baratynsky looks out the window. Outside it is
snowing. At his back a candle burns
on the writing desk, illuminating various papers.
He has just finished a new poem.
He is mentally ill and lonely. And his
unpublishable poem reflects this.
“But it could have reflected something
even worse,” he thinks.
* * *
Kafka is paid a visit by a man named Max B. and
his lady friend. Kafka reads them several
stories. All three enjoy seeing each other.
The lady has a beautiful diamond brooch on
lilac velvet. Max B. has a meticulously
groomed goatee. Kafka has a pleasant, somewhat
melancholy voice.
* * *
At 11 at night Mandelstam wanders
a zoological museum and reads
the labels on the glass cases aloud.
“These taxidermied animals look at me through the glass
and hear sounds that they cannot
understand” — suddenly this occurs to
Mandelstam and, startled, he glances
from side to side.
Then the museum’s empty galleries
echo with the footfalls of a running man, the loud movement
of doors and the rasp of a lock
* * *
In the living room Sapgir reads Kholin his
poem, “I’m Adonis, here’s my penis.”
The door to the bedroom is ajar, and someone inside
fumbles and grunts. The sound of ripping silk makes
Kholin shiver and blush.
* * *
Pivovarov reads his “Project for the biography
of a lonely man.”
His painting looks like a window beyond
which someone lives, lighting the desk lamp
in the evenings.
Sounds come through the window but no one can tell
whether it’s a piano or a conversation.
* * *
Alexeev reads his painting I hear
sounds.
The artists, writers, and
composers present try to make sense of
these sounds, they strain their ears, and in the silence
you can hear their hearts beat.
* * *
Alexei Liubimov performs Cage’s 4:33.
During the performance the audience members
silently listen to sounds.
The source of the sounds is still unknown, but
they are heard by all.
* * *
There they were, the heroes of our time, the legislators
of good spirits, bringing inspiration and a
general shape to boring life;
there they were, tormented by self-consciousness,
buried in the catacombs of memoirs,
squeezing their noses shut to keep the stench
of rotten classicism out,
there they were, surrealists around a giant
table where a thawed Derzhavin
reclined in grandeur, upon the table where
the Renaissance feasted, where the Middle Ages
dimmed, where antiquity and prehistory slew
a calf, and the body of
an unbreathing Adam lay–in a word, on
the blood-stained apron of the Lord God
they were–
and they heard some unintelligible sounds and
foreign voices.
* * *
Sumnin read his Elementary Poetry
№5, “I hear sounds.”
The reading was attended by poets,
artists, and musicians only.
After the reading the audience members all agreed
with the author’s concept and said
that they, too, hear sounds.
\
What is poetry?
When a message says a few different things at the same time, usually including something about how it was made.
What poets/writers/artists do you keep coming back to?
hm.. I usually keep finding new poets/writers/artists and getting excited about them and then moving on (unless I end up becoming friends with them, but it would be weird to name friends here). the first poets I ever really loved were Pushkin and Tsvetaeva. I don’t return to them often these days but I’m always delighted when I do.
What do you think when you see the word lighght?
Too many consonants that aren’t doing anything.
Which new writers and/or small presses are you excited about?
For the last year I’ve been editing an ebook imprint and I’m excited about that (some writers I’m working with: Bunny Rogers, Deanna Havas, Michael Hessel-Mial, Bela Shayevich, Jesse Darling). I’m more in the art world than the publishing world and I’m afriad I don’t know much about presses of any size.
Please tell us about a line that has stayed with you for a while.
“Ask your dumbass friends if they know of a reputable artist.” –Horse_ebooks
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Brian Droitcour is a writer, translator, critic, an editor at the New Inquiry and a PhD candidate in comparative literature at New York University. He has contributed reviews and essays to Artforum, Art in America, and Rhizome, among other publications, and his angry letters to the editor have been published in Artforum and n+1. He has been using Yelp as a platform for art criticism since January 2012 and his account was given Elite status this fall. His web site fifteenstars.com, a collection of found Yelp reviews with illustrations and an accompanying essay, was featured as part of the New Museum’s First Look series of online exhibitions in October 2013. Among other projects, Brian is currently editing Klaus_ebooks, a series of artists’ ebooks published by Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery, and in collaboration with Yelena Kalinsky he is translating a collection of poems by Russian artist and poet Andrei Monastyrski, to be published by Ugly Duckling Presse in 2015.
