ABSTRACT
Aygi belongs to a latter age group, but his poetics stand at such antipodes from Brodsky's that he is better placed among a handful of philosophically inclined language skeptics and radical sense seekers ranging from the pre-Socratic thinkers concerned with ontology to Mallarme and especially Paul Celan. As Peter France's mesmerizing versions in Field-Russia amply show, Aygi boldly departs from the classic metric and rhyme schemes that continue to dominate Russian verse, not only among practitioners in Brodsky's generation but indeed among most younger poets as well. As the hyphenated title suggests, this at once real and metaphorical field is linked to a country. The hyphen is significant, not only because it implies the presence of a community on or perhaps as a "field". Aygi's contemplation of "fields" is pensive, interrogative, and he develops a unique vantage point on major issues of European poetry. Aygi's poetics are so personal that they are probably not very useful to younger poets.
