About poetry

I would hang it for a long time
I am exhausted with my heart
But there is ...
Vsevolod Emelin

It just so happened that the past week was under my sign of the poetry of Vsevolod Emelin , who is increasingly called the best poet of modern Russia.

In general, acquaintance with the work of Vsevolod happened to me in 2005 after the Marat Gelman Foundation released the audio collection of verses of modern Russian poets Osumbez. I admit right away: when I found out about this collection, I did not stand out any special saliva. Well, the collection, well, what? What only Marat does not do.

With poetry, a Russian person, as it seems to me, is generally complex relations. There is Pushkin there with Lermontov, etc. There is a silver age with a bunch of idols (as I heard, Lera Germanicus cannot stand Mandelstam, nevertheless periodically “we live under us without sensing the country”). In the XX century - Brodsky, Yevtushenko, Vysotsky ... In general, everyone has someone to remember them for occasion and without occasion. Moreover, most Russian people can compose poetic texts with one or another degree of success (which, in fact, do).

In short, as they say, we have a literary -centric life in Russia.

But, with all this, we traditionally “love the classics” (to know what it is). Well, in general, the emergence of the Osumbez collection passed me by until I accidentally heard the performance of one of the poets from this collection in the car of the same Marat. As I remember now, the poet unknown to me then told a touching epic story about how the young skinhead fell in love with the “Six Apartment”, about “First Love”, about how she “later turned out to be a Jewish, life as if a penny fell out of her hands.” From the "young skinhead" "boys, from the fire and steel, formidable skins", and he "was looking for oblivion on her chest." Everything would be fine, but “the father and mother burst to her, breaking an orgasm to us, they began to yell”, and “in the USA to study her,” about which “young skinhead” was yearning for.

I heard this poem (“ Skinhead Roman ”) in the execution (living and tapelyphone) countless times, and each time I (what is called, without a bald) have tears in my eyes. Strongly, damn it, takes the soul.

Then (very quickly) I met with many other samples of Emelin's work. Thank God he wrote a lot and continues to create. We met several times-at the Central House of Artists, at the “Pyloram”, at the New Drama festival in Perm last year, and this year-to “Living Perm”, I wanted to call it to the sixth Perm [economic] forum, but something did not grow together. Each meeting with Emelin is a holiday for me.

But back to the same week.

On November 17, the Permm Museum of Contemporary Art was the presentation of Salt , which Seva (I allow myself to call it) was invited as a special guest. It is clear that he read his poems. To be more accurate, the “verse”, because he read one work - about Valentine's Day, in which a man, masturbating on the day of all lovers, “calls” a beauty from a porn site that “came” directly from the computer monitor. It is clear that after such a life is radically changing ...

With all that is called, I needed it that day from Emelin so that he left an autograph on the collection of his poems, which I promised to give the winner of the Limerns contest about me. The results of the competition have already been summed up, the book is signed and waits for the winner (Dmitry Shishkin).

But last week, our communication with Vsevolod Emelin did not end there, since on November 18, in the independent bookstore " Piotrovsky " in Perm, his creative meeting with readers took place.

The fact is that the collection of Seva verses already mentioned above (it is called Vsevolod Emelin. Poems and Ballads. GotterDammerung ) was published by AGMARGINEM. Thanks to him (the publishing house) for this! Accordingly, in the framework of promoting the book, we need creative meetings of the master with admirers, which was organized in Piotrovsky (and where else?).

It is unnecessary to describe all my pleasure from communicating with the maestro, it is clear. You, dear readers, ask: what am I soar with this Emelin. The question is completely reasonable. And the answer to it is very simple: the wisdom of life is concentrated in poetry, and if there are no answers in the surrounding reality, then it is definitely in verses, you just need to look.

Each beginning of the new century in Russia is traditionally poetic. Pushkin already mentioned here (200 years ago) and Silver Age (a hundred years ago) now live in the poetry of Vsevolod Emelin, Andrei Rodionov and many others. It is another matter that we often do not notice them.

Here I recall the “hail” of Strugatsky, where one of the main characters (Iza Katzman) said the genius: “The writers did not heal any ulcers. A sore conscience just hurts, and that’s it ... ”It is clear that someone hurts stronger, for someone weaker ... So. Vsevolod Emelin (like all other poets), of course, he will not save us from anything, since he himself knows nothing. But he can say a lot, and our business is to hear and understand! And here I can’t finish the words of the master from the poem “To the death of Lady Diana Spencer”:

... if you have forgotten it,
We will remind you, Nednoskos,
Like Maria Antoinette
The head jumped on the boards.

About what he did with Karl Cromwell,
About the Yekaterinbug basement
We will remind, so remind,
To no longer forget!