Vladimir Mayakovsky

VLADIMIR MAYAKOVSKY (1893-1930) was a poet, playwright, artist, and actor associated with the Russian Futurist movement. The grudgingly respectful words of Marina Tsetaeva sum up well his life and work: “A rebel among poets; a poet among rebels.” Having lost his father at an early age, Mayakovsky moved with his family to Moscow in 1906 from Baghdati, Georgia, where he was born. He began to compose poetry in 1909 during a period of solitary confinement following one of his arrests for political activity. The 1912 Futurist publication A Slap in the Face of Public Taste contained Mayakovsky’s first published poems, along with the influential manifesto of that name. Alex Cigale’s translations of Mayakovsky’s poems are available online in Asymptote, Eleven Eleven, EM-Review, and Off Course.