V. I. Kozlov. Russian poetry of the early 21st century: Generations, genres, personalities

Abstract

The author of the monograph is Vladimir Kozlov, a renowned literary critic specializing in the history of Russia’s contemporary and most recent poetry and editor of the literary critical journal Prosōdia since 2014. Some of the material included in the book was previously published by Kozlov in Prosōdia. The monograph combines studies, critical articles, and essays written in the last few years on the social-cultural problems of Russian poetry in the early third millennium. The collection is characterized by a broad coverage of diverse contemporary poetic phenomena, the author’s dedication to identifying and problematizing poetic trends that may otherwise pass unnoticed by a mass readership, and its tendency towards comprehensive and theoretically cohesive delivery. While recognizing the publication’s undeniable value, the reviewer finds fault with several of Kozlov’s ideas, as potentially promising as they are conceptually controversial (especially the entire discourse on the concept of ‘neo-traditionalism’ in contemporary Russian poetry).