by Yulia Fintiktikova | Translated by Oksana Maksymchuk and Max Rosochinsky
I
The Resort: with a view of the sea, flying machines, birds, priestesses, and the changing room. Everything in plain view.
II
Flying machines of different kinds – to whoosh through cosmic space.
III
Gilded vessel filled with brandy. To be brought in and taken out at the first call of Fate.
IV
Regimen: non-classified.
V
Vineyards that reach the sky. Pilot gardeners, knowledgeable wine-makers, conscientious sommeliers.
VI
Pension delivered straight to bed, where I’m not alone (there’s also a cat).
VII
Evenings: milonga. Mornings: classical music. Evenings: milonga.
VIII
Women: singing (from happiness).
IX
Men: singing along (also from happiness).
X
Progeny: loving, made in compliance with the sanitary norms, easy to raise. Good vocal tone.
XI
Food: melts in mouth, slippery. Main course of cow and relishes.
XII
Sleep: 21.00 “Disco Dancer”
23.15 “Cleopatra” (with Elizabeth Taylor)
3.15 “Josefine Mutzenbacher: The Viennese Whore”
4.40 cartoons
7.00 prophylaxis
8.00 “The Komsomol Romantic”
9.45 music videos (foreign)
10.15 “Disco Dancer” (rerun)
Yulia Fintiktikova is from Mariupol, Ukraine. Fintiktikova’s poetic manner gives an impression of unmediated sincerity and childlike artlessness. Yet it also forms a complicated web of literary allusions and intonational echoes, referring the reader to the key moments in 20th century Russian poetry; most prominently, futurism (as exemplified by Velimir Khlebnikov and Elena Guro), absurdism (Daniil Kharms), and conceptualism (Dmitri Prigov); to the experimental musical performance genre popularized by Petr Mamonov (Zvuki Mu), Psoy Korolenko, and Pahom; and to Soviet children’s poetry and nursery rhymes.
In Russian, Fintiktikova’s spelling is deliberately flawed and phonocentric, her usage ranging from agrammatical to hyper-official. Her lyrics are often slightly off, as if spoken by a foreigner, forced to rely on textbook phrases and stock expressions.
Fintiktikova is also a performance artist. She regularly takes part in experimental music projects. Most of her texts have been written as performance pieces.
Oksana Maksymchuk is a bilingual Ukrainian-American poet, scholar, and literary translator. Her debut English-language poetry collection Still City is the 2024 Pitt Poetry Series selection, published by University of Pittsburgh Press (US) and Carcanet Press (UK). Oksana’s poems appeared in The Guardian, The Irish Times, The Paris Review, Ploughshares, PN Review, The Poetry Review, and many other journals. In the Ukrainian, she is the author of poetry collections Xenia and Lovy and a recipient of Antonych and Smoloskyp prizes, two of Ukraine’s top awards for younger poets.
Max Rosochinsky is a scholar, translator, and poet from Simferopol, Crimea. He co-edited Words for War: New Poems from Ukraine, a groundbreaking anthology of contemporary poetry; and co-translated Lyuba Yakimchuk’s Apricots of Donbas and Marianna Kiyanovska’s The Voices of Babyn Yar, winner of 2023 Translation Prize from American Association for Ukrainian Studies.