How are Verses Made?

A 1970 printing of Mayakovsky's classic 1926 critical text

Author

Vladimir Mayakovsky, translated from the Russian by G M Hyde

Publisher

Jonathan Cape, London, 1970

Printing Details

First thus. Paperback in wrapper. 18 × 11cm, 80pp

Published as number 43 in the Cape Editions series. "Written in 1926. How are Verses Made? is Mayakovsky's attempt to take aesthetics and literary criticism out of the hands of academicians and state the crucial problems in Marxist terms and in a language intelligible to a mass audience. The eminent Russian poet and painter formulates in simple terms (but never simplistic) the urgent need for a committed literature, providing at the same time a scrupulous and sensitive account of the creative process. This essay, of central importance to students of Soviet literature, is also of great interest to all readers of modern poetry."