Poem
The Final Toast
Anna Akhmatova
Последний тост
Я пью за разорённый дом,
За злую жизнь мою,
За одиночество вдвоём,
И за тебя я пью,—
За ложь меня предавш...
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Essay
Vladislav Khodasevich: Midlife Meltdown in Paris
Jenny Wade
During the unusually hot Parisian summer of 1924, 38-year-old Vladislav Khodasevich—regarded by Nabokov as the finest Russian poet since Blok—was suffering from an identity crisis. One of 3 million exiled from Soviet Rus...
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Essay
Memory – New Translation of Pushkin’s Poem
Jenny Wade
Воспоминание
Когда для смертного умолкнет шумный день
И на немые стогны града
Полупрозрачная наляжет н�...
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Podcasts
S02E03 – Sensitive Skin Live At San Francisco LitCrawl
Bernard Meisler
Sensitive Skin live at LitCrawl, recorded at the Valencia Room, San Francisco.
Instead of the usual conversation, why not give a listen to last week's Sensitive Skin reading at LitCrawl, live from San Francisco? Reade...
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Book
Sensitive Skin Selected Writing 2016-2018
The Editors
Sensitive Skin Books is proud to present our first writing anthology, Sensitive Skin Selected Writing: 2016-2018, Our (once print, now online only) magazine has been described as "The New Yorker on acid," and "almost underground." For almost 30 years, it has featured writing, art and music by artists famous, infamous, unknown and breaking, everybody from William S. Burroughs to Richard Hell to John Lurie to Alex Katz to Eileen Myles to Gary Indiana.
For many (mostly obvious reasons), our final print issue was released in early 2016. But we thought it would be a valuable resource to collect some of our favorite writing from 2016 to 2018, because print, though more and more difficult to justify producing, is still - well, great.
This 306-page anthology, edited by Bernard Meisler, collects selected stories, poems and essays, published online between 2016 and 2018, so you can finally enjoy them in physical book (and Kindle - we ma...
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Podcasts
Season 2 Episode 0
Bernard Meisler
A season-opening mini-episode of the Sensitive Skin podcast featuring your host, Bernard Meisler.
I discuss some of last season's 20 podcasts, what I learned, and the new upcoming season of another 20. Our first guest wil...
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Podcasts
Episode 19 – Mark Howell
Bernard Meisler
Mark Howell in conversation with Bernard Meisler.
Mark Howell
Musical archaeologist (and great guitar player) Mark Howell has played with everybody in the - what would you call it? - avant-progressive-jazz-rock scene -...
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Poem
Now light, now shadow
Naum Korzhavin
Naum Korzhavin was born in the Ukraine in 1925 and as a child witnessed the horrors of collectivization: “I remember the Kiev of 1933. People died right in the streets. . . We survived not only hunger. We got used to think...
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Poem
A conversation between landing craft in the Odessa Port
Jenny Wade
An excerpt from Mayakovsky Maximum Access, selected poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, translated and with commentary by Jenny Wade.
Buy it on Amazon
A conversation between landing craft in the Odessa Port
Feather-clo...
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Sensitive Skin Books
Mayakovsky Maximum Access
Jenny Wade
Sensitive Skin is proud to present Mayakovsky Maximum Access, new translations of selected poems from Vladimir Mayakovsky, translated and with commentary by Jenny Wade.
Futurist, revolutionary, propagandist, hooligan, lover, martyr, clown—the poet Vladimir Mayakovsky was the powerhouse of Russia’s Silver Age. This bilingual edition provides “maximum access” to 24 of his best known poems, including:
—Precise English translations
—Stress marks in the Russian text
—Commentary on syntax, wordplay and neologisms
—Clarification of cultural, historical and literary references
—Essays on theme, persona and poetic technique
“Readers familiar with Mayakovsky’s verse in Russian will enjoy the poetic wit and insight of Jenny Wade’s translations, which also shed light on some of the verbal and syntactic riddles of the original: those seeking to grasp the Mayakovsky phenomenon in English ...
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Maximum Access: A New Series of Poetry Translations
B. Kold
For immediate release: Sensitive Skin is publishing a series of bilingual translations of great poets. The aim of the series, which is called “Maximum Access,” is to bring English-speaking readers as close as possible t...
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Classics
The Twilight of Freedom, a poem by Osip Mandelstam
Jenny Wade
Let us praise, brothers, freedom’s twilight,
The great diminishing year!
A heavy forest of nets is lowered
Into the turbulent waters of night.
You are ascending in desolate years,
Oh sun, judge, people.
Let us prai...
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