S4E3 - Mayakovsky (pt. 3/3)

The Pointless Century

Episode Notes

S4E3: Mayakovsky (pt. 3/3): The Epics TW TW: Suicide / Alexander Billet joins us to discuss the Soviet Futurist-Communist poet Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893 Baghdati – 1930 Moscow). Finally we get to the good stuff. Two speculative war epics, two wild elegies, messages to the future, and assorted screams into the void. The zoomers are all meetinged out. Alex dreams of a world without borders. Frank talks about the Constructicons and tears like a wolf at bureaucracy. This episode focuses on: 150,000,000 / THE FLYING PROLETARIAN / ALL MEETINGED OUT / VLADIMIR ILYICH LENIN / TO SERGEI YESSENIN / CONVERSATION WITH A TAXMAN ABOUT POETRY / MY SOVIET PASSPORT / AT THE TOP OF MY VOICE / PAST 1 O’CLOCK For more on the Russian Revolutions and Civil War, see: Duncan, Mike. Revolutions, Season 10. For our thoughts on Johnny Got His Gun and Pale Horse, Pale Rider, see S3E4. The Pointless Crew: Frank Fucile (he/him/his) @thtopofmyvoice – Lit & Theory, Film & Media, Genre, Enviro & Tech Studies // Alexander Billet (he/him/his) @UbuPamplemousse – Poetry, Music, Cultural Criticism, Marxist Theory & History // Rachel Hamele (she/they/her/their/hers/theirs) – History, Humanities, Queer Studies, Fandoms // Anna Wendorff (she/her/hers) – Communications, Rhetorics of Sci & Tech, Feminism // Madalyn McCabe (she/her/hers) – Co-Producer, Sound Editing, European Studies // Troll us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PointlessCent // T-shirts are now available: http://www.teepublic.com/users/the-pointless-century // Watch us on Instagram: @thePointlessCentury // Support us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/ThePointlessCentury Shout out to Locust Review: https://www.locustreview.com/ https://twitter.com/locustreview Bibliography: Brown, Edward J. Mayakovsky: A Poet in the Revolution, Princeton UP, 1973. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. The Bedbug and Selected Poetry. Translated by Max Hayward and George Reavey, edited by Patricia Blake, Indiana UP, 1960. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. Mayakovsky. Translated and edited by Herbert Marshall, Hill and Wang, 1965. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. Poems. Translated by Dorian Rottenberg, USSR, 1972. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. Selected Poems. Translated by James H. McGavran III, Northwestern UP, 2013. Mayakovsky, Vladimir. Volodya: Selected Works. Edited by Rosy Carrick, Enitharmon, 2015. Morton, Timothy. Humankind: Solidarity with Non-Human People. Verso, 2017. Schick, Christine Suzanne. Russian Constructivist Theory and Practice in the Visual and Verbal Forms of Pro Eto. Doctoral Dissertation, UC Berkeley, 2011. https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3949b3fr MUSIC: FUGAZI – “Ex-Spectator” from The Argument (Dischord, 2001) and “Public Witness Program” from In on the Kill Taker (Dischord, 1993) THE CLASH – “Ivan Meets GI Joe” from SANDINISTA! (Epic, 1980) ART: Vladimir Mayakovsky with young poets at retrospective exhibition, 1930