To The Slanderers of Art

"To the Slanderers of Art": Don Mager has translated Klyuev's "To the Slanderers of Art" (1932). Mager believes this is the first complete translation in English. Nikolai Klyuev (1887-1937) is a major poet of the early twentieth century in Russia. His name is sometimes transliterated as Nikolay Klyuyev, or other variants. Klyuev was accused of being a Kulak poet and banned from publishing. He lived a hand-to-mouth itinerant life until his final arrest. Speculation on how he died was not resolved until release of KGB files in the 1990s documented his execution in the yard of a prison camp in Tomsk in August 1937. He was rehabilitated in 1977 and his poems were republished in Russia. Cover Art Credit: Untitled (H3) from the Bounded By Mountains series (excerpt), Michael Cherney (qiumai.net)