russian futurism

I also had a hard time deciphering the poems but I think fully understanding the language and original translation would certainly help. However, I didn’t focus on the difficulty of the poems for me, but rather the way the critics described the poetry. I could not help but think of the “Beat Generation” while reading Guy Bennet’s introduction. He described Kruchenykh’s zaum poetry as “studiously unschooled, occasionally vulgar, consistently irreverent; riddled with (intentional?) misspellings and grammatical errors; tinged with sexual and scatological imagery; provocative, challenging, forgotten.” This made me think immediately of works I have read by Kerouac, or Burroughs, or Cassady, etc. For one thing, it made me really appreciate what they were doing with words. Words and language are so protean to begin with that there are endless possibilities to experiment with to further the horizon of expression and understanding. However, I also wondered just how avant-garde what these poets were doing really was. Mayakovsky says “From the height of skyscrapers we gaze at their insignificance!” referring to poets of the past. At the same time, I feel like that comment would be fitting to Neal Cassady or someone from that generation that truly believed they were doing something completely out of the ordinary or modern. I feel like the Mayakovskys or the Cassadys are simply spokes on the cycle of reoccurring thought that manifests itself in every generation. I’m not saying this is not a great thing, it is. I just think the arrogance and their adamant rejection of the past is a little obnoxious.