It's No Good

Before retiring from the literary world and relinquishing all copyright to his work in 2003, Kirill Medvedev had published two collections of poetry with a traditional publishing house. His poems are autobiographical free verse, unusual in Russia, and were dismissed by some critics as not really poetry. Medvedevs poetry casual, often explicitly political, irreverent fiercely diagnose the banality and disease of Putin-era Russia. Edited and introduced by n+1 co-founder Keith Gessen, Its No Good includes selected poems from Kirill Medvedevs books of poetry and subsequent online publications, as well as his most significant essays: My Fascism (on the failure of post-Soviet Russian liberalism, politically and culturally); Literature Will Be Tested (on the attractions and dangers of the new sincerity in Russian letters); Dmitry Kuzmin: An Essay-Memoir (a detailed memoir and analysis of the work of the 1990s Moscow poet, publisher, and impresario Kuzmin, and what his activity represents). As always, they are published without the authors permission.