Air Raid

Ainsley Morse is a literary translator and Russian literature scholar specializing in poetry and the 20th century.

Ainsley Morse

Michael M. Weinstein is a poet, essayist, and literary scholar. He lives in Tucson, Arizona and can be found on Twitter @transpoetics.

Michael M. Weinstein

The Guts of the Living: On Polina Barskova’s “Air Raid”

"For a long time now I haven't been I."
— Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

Around the World

Yuri Tynianov (1894–1943) was a major literary theorist, literary historian, and prose writer. Tynianov’s purview as a scholar covers literary history, poetics, and film; his contributions to theory can be condensed into a number of key concepts, of which “literary evolution” is perhaps the most all-encompassing. Tynianov shows that any literary “fact,” and literature (or film) itself, is a mutable, dynamic entity, existing simultaneously in multiple complex systems, the elements of which are constantly interacting (and changing through interaction) with those of other systems: the internal system of a given work, the system of a genre, the system of a literary or artistic movement, of a national literature, et cetera. With the forced dismantling of the Formalist school in 1930, Tynianov largely withdrew from literary scholarship and devoted his efforts to writing historical fiction. He died, of complications from multiple sclerosis, in Moscow in 1943.

Yuri Tynianov

Vera Koshkina is a freelance writer and translator living in Berlin. She received her PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures and Film and Visual Studies at Harvard University.

Vera Koshkina

Yuri Tynianov’s “Film — Word — Music” (1924)

"There is only one thing that can kill the Movies, and that is education." — Will Rogers

Film

The Fire Horse

“Comrade, Can You Paint My Horse?” Soviet Kids’ Books Today

Adults are just obsolete children and the hell with them.
— Dr. Seuss

Young Adult &amp; Children’s Literature

"I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry." — John Cage

Poetry

Ainsley Morse is a literary translator and Russian literature scholar specializing in poetry and the 20th century.