Vyacheslav Kuritsyn. Kuritsyn-weekly from April 4

Kuritsyn-weekly from April 4
Prokhanov is threatened by the National Bestseller. Slam-4 was won by Andrey Rodionov. Poems and prose by Dmitry Dragilev. New verse by Dmitry Sokolov. A new story by Olga Slavnikova. Akunin in Quo vadis.

Vyacheslav Kuritsyn

Publication date: April 4, 2002

Hexogen - to the masses

Today, in some fancy Moscow hotel, the shortlist for the “National Bestseller” was announced. “Mr. Hexogen” by Alexander Prokhanov (members of the grand jury gave him as many as 16 points), “Karaganda Nineties” by Oleg Pavlov (7 points), Song for lovers by V. Denezhkina (this is a manuscript put forward by a good man Stas Zelvensky; I have not read) reached the finals ; 7 points), “Fritz Syndrome” by Dmitry Bortnikov (this is a manuscript put forward by a good man, Yuri Mamleev; I haven’t read it; 6 points), “Immortal” by Olga Slavnikova (what kind of wedding is there without a button accordion; 6 points), “Give me a monkey” Sergei Nosov (6 points).

Well, that's interesting. The presence of two manuscripts on the list is a temptation for National Bestseller, of course. Give a prize to an unknown author and promote him from scratch. If I was rooting for the award, I would have done so. But I still root for society, and I want Prokhanov to win, who is important as at least some kind of resistance to the authorities (I wrote more about this here ). The chances are great: and the large number of the Grand Jury, even if it does not oblige the Small to anything, will put psychological pressure + Vladimir Bondarenko on the jury + banker Kogan (the only untouchable member of the jury, because he unfastens the money), who last year gave his vote to Prokhanov. ..

Slam for monsters

The fourth tournament of the “Russian Slam” turned out to be less energetic for me than the third: partly because of the poor form of the host (me), partly because of the number of participants (nine turned out to be a lot, we haven’t tried that many yet). Plus, the jury included some very strange, incomprehensible people: with the exception of the poet Vodennikov, the audience was not just a crowd, but some kind of institutional canteen. However, the tournament was the strongest in terms of participants, diverse in prosodic terms, and outside observers generally liked it. And the participants seemed to be hooked. But to the point.

The first to speak was Alexander Voznesensky, a journalist from Ex Libris, about whom I knew that he wrote poetry, but did not know that it was so good and in such a range: from cynical clumsiness to philosophical lyrics. And how Voznesensky knows how to behave publicly is a well-known fact. So from the very beginning, a high level was set for both the body on stage and the ratings of this body: Voznesensky was given 23 points.

Then Dina Gatina, looking like a small land mermaid, came out, all so serious. A resident of the city of Engels half-sang something like this in a half-forgotten voice -

How I went to the clown -
mother doesn't know.
I carry children half-length
at the pole -
sow.
For the first time my playfulness
came out
run through the clowns,
embroidered cherries
pecked
on the calf.

And it’s so beautiful, and all this is performed beautifully. The magic was appreciated, for the first time in a slam the scores for artistry were 4, 5, 5, 5, 5 (the second time - for another performer - they turned out to be the same in the final, forty minutes later), and Dina raked in 27 points - very a lot of.

Then Vadim Mesyats came out, who the day before, especially for the slam, had composed a wonderful poem about mom and bears, shortened it with a stopwatch to the required four minutes, and also sang it beautifully -

I had a strange dream the other day
my poor dear mother:
there are three bears under the icons
in the depths of the Lord's temple... -

and who received 22 is a point less than Voznesensky. There were six more participants ahead, but I already dreamed of seeing the first three in the second round and, as the presenter, began to make efforts to merge all the next ones.

The fourth participant, Paris Perker, was easy to lose; I told the audience his real name - Berger, and therefore the jury did not take the poet seriously, although he read the hit “Tear me apart, Lord, if this is not so” in his brilliant loud style: only 14 minus a point for exceeding a minute, a total of 13. But Berger-Perker, in any case, went down in Russian slam history as the first person to take part in two tournaments in one season. Just like Vodennikov entered into this same story - as a person who first participated in the slam and then judged it.

Fifth was Andrei Rodionov , a man of active appearance, with one and a half ears, who, according to him, is not allowed into the “Project OGI” club - you have to try hard. Rodionov showed himself monstrously, texts like -

On the Moscow-Third platform
Sells scandofords
Little grandfather in a jacket.
The wrinkles on his forehead are like fiords,
And a blue vein on a yellow temple, -

he read, swaying towards the microphone, on such a wave that I already danced, but at the same time I experienced something not entirely healthy. 23 points. It was not possible to drain Rodionov; he bypassed Mesyats, to my regret.

Intelligent and quiet Sergei Sokolovsky, himself surprised that he got to the Sabbath, received 19. Confused Yuri Shabashidze, who limited himself to one and a half minutes instead of four, received 18. Cheerful Alena Yakovleva - also 18. Here the energy was also tricky: the audience, tired of the strong beginning, no longer I was waiting for miracles. They stopped listening. Perhaps that is why the jury rated Alexey Yarsky, who very confidently performed very competent texts, only 20.

Voznesensky, Gatina and Rodionov fought in the final. Here I made a mistake: I should have chosen more intelligent people on the jury, but, tired and generally unhealthy, I entrusted the choice of the jury to absolute chance, and as a result, there were two people on the commission, so inserted by Rodionov that they openly conflated Voznesensky and Gatina. These fiends unanimously gave them almost exclusively units, which absolutely predetermined the outcome. Voznesensky - 17, Gatina - 21, Rodionov - 29.

Rodionov won completely deservedly; he is truly a slammer and, in my opinion, the best content creator of all the four super-finalists existing at this moment. But I am extremely sorry that Gatina or Mesyats - or Voznesensky at least - did not win. At slam-4, we specially gathered as many so-called “professional poets” as possible so that one of them would win, so that the super final at the end of May would not consist only of marginalized poets. The result was that the most marginal and savage of the professionals, Rodionov, won (the most offensive thing is that he was included as an extra, ninth; he should have been left for the next tournament). Thus, we had three wonderful tournaments: the first , third and fourth (I was not at the second slam, they say it was worse) and we get a very bizarre super final: from the savages Fryazinsky, Potemkin and Rodionov and the school Sonya Oleinik. Well, here you are, the first Russian slam!

This is how you will go down in the history of Shar!

Applications for the fifth (also the last of five preliminary) tournament of the season are accepted - slamrussian@pochtamt.ru - until April 15. The tournament itself is on the 28th at the Dom center.

Metaphor inside

It was with great interest that I learned about the existence of the poet Dmitry Dragilev, and I hasten to share my discovery with you by publishing several indicative texts . These poems, with their desire to discover the internal, energetic structure of things, are akin to the tradition of “metarealism” and expand the understanding of this tradition, which is still very poorly described and studied. Dragilev instills the wildness of modern telegraph writing into “metarealism,” and we have the following result:

skeptic kinescope straining the structure diligently and the grid of cameras
the rafters are planed and it looks like my cheeks are sunken
and filtered face of a cleaver in secam
looks simpler than your own pale profile

But the prose is charming in the same ways, but I liked it less than the poetry: due to the understandable, common nostalgic pathos.

Artist in the ass

Re-reading the Weekly and stumbling upon Slavnikova’s name, I realized that I had not announced her new story, which had been published in Ozone some time ago. It's called "The End of Monplaisir" . Tells what art can achieve. The story was written already last summer at my request for one project, which never took place. It is published, of course, for the first time.

Arabs are everywhere

The USA is not a friend. Israel is not the enemy.
Politkovskaya is a fool. Babitsky is an asshole.

Oh, why do your monsters go north?
They will take you to Vasilyevsky Island to die.

Our body is cheesecake, and our blood is milk.
Only the monk and the paratrooper will die easily.

The rest have nothing more to say.
It was time to become Arabs...

Further - here . Today we have a so-called poetic feast. This is a new poem by Dmitry Sokolov , essayist for Izvestia, author of the unreal "Skobochka" (search here ). However, all his poems are magnificent, and he writes them extremely well. The previous one appeared almost a year ago, and was also devoted to the Arab issue.

Puddle in front of the Youth Theater

"Ozone" brought Boris Akunin to St. Petersburg. The meeting with readers (mainly the press) took place at the Quo vadis Internet club (a wonderful place, by the way; I highly recommend it; there is a free library). It was a good meeting, a hundred people came, but, in general, the interview was just an interview. Akunin pushed them a lot and promises to stop. The transcript will soon appear on Ozone, and the video and audio will appear on the quovadis website.

After Akunin, I went to the Eastern European Institute of Psychoanalysis, where a discussion took place about a book about a three-letter word, namely “dick.” The first volume of a large dictionary of obscenities collected by Plutser-Sarno. There were also about a hundred people there. About 20 of them spoke very seriously, the rest were sincerely worried. You will read detailed reports from Daria Sukhovey and Polina Kopylova in the Weekly in a week: this is a lot of scientific material. And in another week it will be about swearing again (on a different occasion) and also scientifically. I know this in advance that I won’t go near the computer much in the next couple of weeks, and I prepare the releases in advance. And I won’t answer email - well, email.

The debate is about x. on the sidelines lasted until late at night. About one o'clock, already quite good, my friends and I walked past the Youth Theater. There was a puddle there. Not like Gogol’s, but a normal puddle: ten meters long, one and a half meters wide. The young man he met pointed to the puddle and declared: “I was the one who grabbed it!” I say: “You couldn’t do that much, those iron pissers over there (there are some kind of Komsomol members standing there as monuments), but you couldn’t.” And he: “No, I wrote it all! It’s me!”

This is how he asserted his phallicity.