New book of miniatures is ready for publication
A new book of miniatures by Alexander Korotko has been prepared and scheduled for publication. Unlike previous editions, the collection consists mainly of single verses interspersed with single line poems. Thus, the author’s attitude to the genre of poetic miniatures evolves, acquiring the depth of thought, semantic accuracy and rich imagery in a new form. Horizontal single line poems and vertical monoverses add a completely different dimension to a unique poetic creation.
The author had an extremely rigorous approach to the selection of these pieces in a small genre, including in the collection of them both the best works of past years, written mostly in the past year and some even at the beginning of this year.
There has always been a scattering of miniatures in Alexander Korotko’s poetry collections, they can be seen in earlier (“The Night Well”, “The Applause of Dead Hands”, “Week days of Mind” and later editions (“Silent Songs”, “I Didn’t Live on Earth”, “There are birds of separation of love”), bilingual books translated into English and French (“On both sides of love”, “The anthill of the silence”), as well as single-line miniatures released separately (“Transcription of thought”, “The future has returned to the past”) and a book translated into French “The Red Frog” (“La grenouille rouge”).
Critics and readers, having encountered small but powerful philosophical poetic thoughts and metaphorically incredibly miniature poems, are grateful to the author not only for a literary pleasure, but also for opening their minds to the possibility of their own spiritual growth in the vastness of the universe.
We deliberately are not revealing either the title of this new book or the name of the publishing house. This is not out of superstition, but for reasons of correctness. However, we consider it appropriate to quote a critical article written as long ago as the early noughties by art critic Sergei Papeta, which has not lost its relevance.
“Alexander Korotko is a master of concise poetic formulations, distinguished by their accuracy and almost material tangibility in conveying the finest non-material states. His poems seem as if cast in a weightless bronze of words from single forms, the uniqueness of which is due to the individuality of each separately arising poetic impulse. Solely out of an arbitrary internal poetic impulse, the line is lengthened and shortened, the rhyme is born and dies, the rhythm slows down or is accelerated.
In the poetry collection “Transcription of thoughts” Alexander Korotko brings to its logical conclusion the single-line poem form that has repeatedly appeared in his previous books of poems. The ability to crystallize poetic thought, the ornamental gems of a small poetic form generate in his work a distinctive kind of poem within a poem, where a line is both part of the text and a complete whole. The subsequent emanation of a single line into an independent work is to some extent consonant with the tendencies of minimization of form in contemporary art. This is a kind of desire to reduce the “excess weight” of a work by increasing its intangible assets. Unlike, for example, compact Japanese haiku, which in essence are a kind of sophisticated poetic plein-air (open space), Alexander Korotko’s poems create new dimensions of existing concepts by destroying verbal dogmas. Unexpected, sometimes shocking, phrases form a subjective phraseology, which throws bridges into that world that can be expressed in the only possible way. Despite the fact that formally, Alexander Korotko’s poetry is closest to the phenomena of the art of postmodernism, it never crosses the line beyond which the anarchy of words begins. In his poems one can feel a good grafting of traditional poetry, in particular, the brilliant poetry of the Silver Age with its exquisite symbolism, sophisticated associations and delicate elegance of form:
Как плющом, наши ночи снами увиты.”
The full article can be read here:
https://korotko-poetry.com/en/kritika
And on the home page – single-line poems from the the poet Alexander Korotko’s vast collection of miniatures.
