NORMAL HUMAN LOVE –

THE LOVE OF A MAN AND A WOMAN, FOR EXAMPLE,

I CAN ONLY UNDERSTAND SEXUAL ATTRACTION

AND LOVE FOR ALL MANKIND –

an innocent, self-negating love,

and so I ask someone far away, and also self-negating,

but he doesn’t answer – as if he’s mute or not there…

The repetitions of “love...LOVE...LOVE...love” are heavily monotonous; by the time we have left Capsland, the word “love” is numbed out of its original intensity and the poem seems thinner, as if Medvedev had performed a liposuction on it. One result is that while each poem is very powerful, most cannot be considered standalone masterpieces because the violence of the author has colored them with this political take-it-or-leave-it quality.

Medvedev has brilliantly anticipated, but not truly managed to avoid the traps of literature and politics that he so perceptively outlines in his essays. His present celebrity as the leading poet of his country is yet a fragile one, by very fact of its inimitable novelty. Having escaped the rules of the Russian publishing world to become their lonely exception, Medvedev yet risks turning out to be only a confirmation of their proof.

—Staff writer Victoria Zhuang can be reached at vzhuang@college.harvard.edu.