Alyokhin, A. (2023). Jam from fallen fruit. Moscow: Eksmo. (In Russ.)

Abstract

The article responds to Jam from Fallen Fruit [Varenie iz padalitsy], the book by the poet and critic Aleksey Alyokhin, best known as a founder and editor-in-chief of the poetry magazine Arion (1994–2019). With entries spanning the decades between 1968 and 2020, this literary diary is examined in the context of the vogue for short essay writing prevalent among Russian poets. The book is compared to Vladimir Gandelsman’s Notebooks for Future Use [Zapasnye knizhki] (2022) and Marina Kudimova’s A Phobia of Long Words [Fobiya dlinnykh slov] (2023). The author points out that, despite their dissimilarities, all three poets represent the same generation (with birthdates in the late 1940s and early 1950s), whose worldview had matured before the advent of social media. Jam from Fallen Fruit is marked by the sort of unhurried intonation and highly concentrated statement that has become rare in our age of online journals. Various extracts, though written years apart, can be put together as a jigsaw puzzle, forming a new text. The book seems to invite the reader’s active collaboration: everyone can co-author a unique narrative.