James McGavran s new translation of Vladimir Mayakovsky s poetry is the first to fully capture the Futurist and Soviet agitprop artist s voice. Because of his work as a propagandist for the Soviet regime, and because of his posthumous enshrinement by Stalin as the best and most talented poet of our Soviet epoch, Mayakovsky has most often been interpreted and translated within a political context. McGavran s translations reveal a more nuanced poet who possessed a passion for word creation and linguistic manipulation. Mayakovsky s bombastic metaphors and formal elan shine through in these...