Poem
Wasps
Osip Mandelstam
In an interview from 1976, Nadezhda Mandelstam, the widow of the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam, was asked if she had any favorite poems. She mentioned two, both written in the winter of 1937: “Verses about an unknown ...
More...
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...
More...
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 -...
More...
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...
More...
Podcasts
Episode 13 – Jack Hirschman
Bernard Meisler
Jack Hirschman in conversation with Bernard Meisler.
Jack Hirschman
Jack Hirschman, Poet Laureate emeritus of San Francisco, author of over 100 books in nine languages, essayist and painter, is a living legend. We me...
More...
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...
More...
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...
More...
Review
Sensitive Skin Contributors 2016 Favorites – Books, Movies, TV, Art, Performance and Music – Reasons to Live
The Editors
Before we get on to the 2016 Favorites, first things first, I need to get this off my chest: Hey 2016 - go suck a bag of d***s, will ya?
OK, and now, without further ado, presented without rhyme or reason, here's our annu...
More...
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...
More...
Music
Timber Live At Brownies, NYC, June 1, 1995
Timber
Here's a gem that just resurfaced, a video of the complete performance by Timber live at Brownies, NYC, June 1, 1995.
https://youtu.be/mRPQfvsUuq4
0:00 Let It Down
5:10 Jam/Belay That
10:47 Anti-Mother-In-Law Ca...
More...
Essay
Unfinished – A New Translation of Vladimir Mayakovsky’s Poem Fragment
Jenny Wade
Unfinished, a poem fragment by Vladimir Mayakovsky, discovered in M’s papers after his suicide in 1930.
Любит? не любит? Я руки ломаю
и пальцы разбрасываю разломавши
т�...
More...
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...
More...