Aleksandr Skidan

Aleksandr Skidan: Two films, two poems, and an interview

When the Soviet Union fell apart at the start of the 1990s, it seemed to many that social transformation and aesthetic revolution were in full synchronicity. What was left of the stuffy orthodoxy of Soviet culture and its official style of socialist realism was swept away, and the unofficial art and writing that had been developing for years in the underground and in alternative social spaces burst into public view.

Read more about Aleksandr Skidan: Two films, two poems, and an interview

March 2, 2018

Kevin M. F. Platt and Aleksandr Skidan in conversation

Aleksandr Skidan

Kevin M. F. Platt

Note: Aleksandr Skidan was born in Leningrad in 1965. He worked from the late 1980s through the 1990s as a stoker in a boiler room while becoming known for his innovative poetry, critical writings, and translations of contemporary American poetry and important works of critical theory.

Read more about Kevin M. F. Platt and Aleksandr Skidan in conversation

March 2, 2018

Kino Eye

Read more about Kino Eye

Listen to Aleksandr Skidan read “Kino Eye” here; listen to the poem in English here.

Kino Eye

Aleksandr Skidan

March 2, 2018

Pierrot le Fou

Read more about Pierrot le Fou

Listen to Aleksandr Skidan read “Pierrot le Fou” here; listen to the poem in English here.

Pierrot le Fou

March 2, 2018

Aleksandr Skidan on Close Listening

Aleksandr Skidan was born in Leningrad in 1965. He is a poet, critic, essayist, and translator. In 2008 his book Red Shifting was published in USA by Ugly Duckling Presse, tr. Genya Turovskaya. He is the coeditor of the New Literary Observer magazine and lives in Saint Petersburg.

Program One: Skidan reads from Red Shifting (Brooklyn: Ugly Ducking Press, 2008) in Russian as well as reading the English translations by Genya Turovskaya. MP3

Program Two: Skidan discusses his Ugly Duckling Press book, Red Shifting, the changes in the literary climate in Russia after 1989, the contemporary situation for poetry in Russia, and the mysticism of Arkadii Dragomoschenko. MP3

Read more about Aleksandr Skidan on Close Listening

March 4, 2015

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Two of a kind (PennSound Rewind #2)

A lesson in grieving and acceptance from Allen and Louis Ginsberg

PennSound Rewind

An old man and his hippie son, both poets. — Louis and Allen Ginsberg in Miami, 1969

Two decades after memorializing his mother Naomi in “Kaddish,” we find Ginsberg working in a very different mode as he actively documents the death of his father Louis in one, or eventually, two poems with the same name. The first “Don’t Grow Old,” written around the time of Louis’ death, appeared in the collection Mind Breaths in 1978; the latter can be found in 1982’s Plutonian Ode. However the two works were envisioned by Ginsberg as one complete poem, as evidenced by a number of recordings made by Robert Creeley at the time of the second poem’s composition and the broader recorded history contained on Ginsberg’s PennSound author page. As we explore “Don’t Grow Old” (and “‘Don’t Grow Old’”), we’ll witness Ginsberg come to terms with his father through his decline, then see how latter poem reframes that experience through Louis’ reciprocal acceptance of his son’s queer identity, offering up potent lessons in mourning, as well as an important statement regarding homodomesticity and intergenerational reconciliation.