Nikolai Klyuev is the first book in English to examine the life and work of this enigmatic poet. Klyuev (1884-1937) rose to prominence in the early twentieth century as the first of the so-called -new peasant poets- but later fell victim to Stalinist hostility to both his cultural ideology and his homosexuality. He was arrested and exiled in 1933, then shot in 1937.
Klyuev's work incorporates rich elements of folklore, mysticism, politics, and religion, and he sometimes invokes arcane Russian syntax and vocabulary. Makin's feat is particularly notable because Klyuev was often...