Poetry & Irony

In The America Complex, a review of Amerika: Russian Writers View the United States, Rebecca Reich writes,

In America, poet Grigory Kruzhkov says, mutual respect has destroyed artistic rigor, with people making such an effort to understand each other that they forget how to speak their own language. Try to get an American to parse a poem, Kruzhkov says, with English that has been run through the PC mill. Physicist and critic Anatoly Barzakh blames "the idiocy of 'political correctness,' the marginalization of culture, the flourishing of subcultures" on democracy in general, which undermines rigor and hierarchy by giving equal precedence to all walks of life.

I can't help but agree with that, at least partially.

But most of the contributors

are convinced that they know all there is to know about it: Americans smile too much. They're diligent and efficient, but lack a sense of irony...

With some exceptions, the Russians in this collection conform to a ready-made opinion that is only confirmed by first-hand experience. "On the whole, in principle, there's no real need to travel to America in order to know everything you need to know about it, all that's useful to know for one's possibilities," poet Dmitry Prigov writes.

There's irony for you.