Endarkenment: Selected Poems

Arkadii Trofimovich Dragomoshchenko: A Brief Biography and Bibliography

Photo: Dmitry Volchek | 143 A BRIEF BIOGRAPHY AND BIBLIOGRAPHY Dragomoshchenko was born in 1946 at Potsdam, where his father served as an officer in the Soviet Army. A photograph remains of him as a swaddled baby in front of the burnt-out Reichstag. He grew up in Vinnytsia, Ukraine. Although composed in Russian , his poems respond to his Ukrainian Baroque heritage in a certain softness of their speech, their music, illegibility, bookishness, and penchant for symbols.The lush, dusty summers of the Ukraine provide the nameless landscape of his eclogues. In 1969 Dragomoshchenko enrolled in theater school in Leningrad to settle permanently in that city. He became active as an underground poet, typing up booklets of his work and collaborating with samizdat magazines. In the early eighties he participated in the literary society Club 81, a compromise with the authorities to legalize samizdat culture. Still, his first legal publications saw light only during perestroika. In 1983 Dragomoshchenko met the American poet Lyn Hejinian during her visit to Leningrad. At his suggestion, without a language in common, they embarked on a correspondence that later became the object of Letters Not About Love, a documentary by Jacki Ochs.When the Soviet Union started to sag, Arkadii and Lyn jointly arranged visits of experimental American poets to the Soviet Union, and of their Russian counterparts to the United States. Their 1983 meeting turned into the most significant, as far as experimental poetry is concerned, event of the end of the Cold War.1 1990 saw the publication of Dragomoshchenko’s first two books of poems: one in Russian, Nebo sootvetstvii, and one in English, Description , translated by Hejinian and Elena Balashova.These books were followed by the publication of Xenia in both countries and both languages, a tour of the States by the poet, and teaching assignments at sunyBuffalo , ucsd, and nyu. Meanwhile in the renamed Saint Petersburg, Dragomoshchenko was acquiring followers and allies, and serving as a poetic voice for ARKADII TROFIMOVICH DRAGOMOSHCHENKO 144 | Arkadii Trofimovich Dragomoshchenko Russians interested in deconstruction and poststructuralism—Western philosophies brought to the literary market by the abolition of censorship. He became the target of attacks by traditionalists. Dragomoshchenko made a living by lecturing, editing, writing for magazines, proofreading, even typesetting. He was translated into all major European languages, and welcomed at poetry festivals all over the world. He composed pioneering translations of contemporary Western, and especially American, poets. His last full book was released by Oxford University Press in Chinese. He died on September 12, 2012. pubLisHed Works Nebo sootvetstvii [The Corresponding Sky]. Poetry. Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel’, 1990. Description. Poetry. Tr. Lyn Hejinian and Elena Balashova. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon, 1990. Ksenii [To Xenia]. Poetry. Saint Petersburg: Mitin Zhurnal, Borey Art, 1993. Xenia. Poetry. Tr. Lyn Hejinian and Elena Balashova. Los Angeles: Sun and Moon, 1994. Fosfor [Phosphorus]. Novel. Saint Petersburg: Severo-Zapad, 1994. Pod podozreviem [Under Suspicion]. Poetry. Saint Petersburg: Borey Art, 1994. Kitaiskoe solntse [Chinese Sun]. Novel. Saint Petersburg: Mitin Zhurnal, Borey Art, 1997. Opisanie [Description]. Poetry. Saint Petersburg: Gumanitarnaia akademiia, 2000. Na beregakh iskliuchennoi reki [On the Shores of the Expelled River]. Moscow: OGI, 2005. Chinese Sun. Novel. Tr. Evgeny Pavlov. Brooklyn, NY: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2005. Bezrazlichiia [Indifferences]. Shorter prose. Saint Petersburg: Borey Art, 2007. Dust. Shorter prose. Tr. Evgeny Pavlov et al. Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive, 2008. Tavtologiia [Tautology]. Poetry. Moscow: NLO, 2011. Shoaling Things / Naar de ondiepte. Poetry. With Jan Lauwereyns. Ghent: DRUKsel, 2011. Tavtologiia / Tong yi fan fu. Poetry. Tr. Wenfei Liu. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 2011. Paper Dreams / Zhi Meng. Poetry. Tr. Gilbert Chee Fun Fong et al. Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2012. ...