presents
Kirsanov, Semyon Isaakovich. Born on 18 September (5 September, old style) 1906 in Odessa into the family of a tailor.
While studying philology at the Odessa Institute of Peoples Education in the 1920s, he began writing poetry about the liquidation of illiteracy, Red Army Soldiers, the Revolution, etc. In 1925 he moved to Moscow and became an active member of Mayakovsky's "Lef" movement.In the 1930s he used his poetry to further the propaganda and agitation goals of the Soviet goverment. For example, the collection Lines of Construction (Stroki Stroiki), Poetry in the Ranks (Stikhi V Stroiu), Shock Quarter (Udarni Kvartal) , The Five Year Plan (Pyatiletka) and Comrade Marx (Tovarishch Marks). He created slogans for factories and traveled to the Dneproges construction site. During the Great Patriotic War, he worked as a front-line correspondent for varioius newspapers as well as TASS. He contributed slogans, pamphlets, chastushki, articles, and poems. Works published after the war include the books Feeling of the New (Chustvo Novovo), Soviet Life (Sovetskaya Zhizn), and Comrade Poetry (Tovarishch Stikhi). In the 1950s there was the poem The Top (Vershina) as well as a cycle of poems about Italy and London and Leningrad Notebook (Leningradsky Tetrad). In later years he published the collections Lyric Poetry (Lirka), Searchings (Iskaniya) and The Mirror (Zerkolo). He also translated the works of Pablo Neruda, Louis Argon and others. He died on 10 December 1972 in Moscow. |