What do you think about Timur Kibirov (Тимур Кибиров)?

"wrapped around his toothbrush"????????

Is it just because I'm British that the following seems misguided? Are our versions of English so far apart?
>>It is difficult for modern British English to adapt to the requirements of a political public poetry. The strict syntax patterns of British English also reflect, in my opinion, class patterns, a social etiquette emphasizing privacy, good manners. American English, with lists being an integral part of poetic speech, that is to say because of Whitman and poets who followed him, has greater possibilities. Significantly, this is the second book of Orhan Veli's poetry in the United States. In England, no book by him has yet been published.

I wondered about that too. But I do think British poetry, aside from the occasional outlier like Blake, has traditionally been resistant to the unbuttoned, repetitious style associated with Whitman, Pound, Ginsburg, et al. I have no idea whether that's still true, though.

Map: This is my first introduction to him, but based on what you linked I don't find him that interesting -- spirited for sure, but the rhythms are boring and the rhymes sometimes far-fetched (I think I might have liked him better when I was into Voznesensky). I did learn the word лабух (lábukh) 'musician, band member' from him, though; does anybody know the etymology?

It's one thing to say British poetry has been resistant to the unbuttoned, repetitious style etc., and another to say that British syntax has strict patterns, so that if a British poet *could* not write that way. This is nonsense. And it's the same language! Nor do I know what is meant by BE having difficulty with 'a political public poetry'.
I agree the poems didn't look that interesting. The translator said it wasn't until he repeated the words in English that the feeling came through, but I don't see any particular effect of that repetition (though if it's in the original I would repeat it too). Really, one's looking through a glass (very) darkly here.

Reagrding Timur Kibirov, when LH said "He sounds a bit like a Turkish equivalent of Paul Blackburn" I thought who could be a Russian equivalent, and Kibirov was the one who came to my mind.
"лабух (lábukh)": here is a relevant discussion. I asked a question about etymology here, let's see if they have an answer...

There is an opinion that the word came from the Gipsy language.

Map: Thanks very much for raising the question at the forum -- the answer is very full and (mostly) convincing! To summarize, V.V. Shapoval, in "Otkuda prishel slovo labukh?" [Where did the word labukh come from?] suggests that the verb labát' 'to play music (for money)' is the original form and was borrowed from Romanes gilabe- 'to sing (songs),' specifically from the 2 pl. imperative gilaban(te)! 'sing!' (with or without the Russified -te ending), with the initial syllable elided as in other popular borrowings (a striking example is Ukr. raklo 'thief, nogoodnik' from Gerakl 'Heracles'), so that gilabante gave rise to labaite (with a fully Russified imperative ending), from which an entire conjugation labát' was constructed. The weak point, to me, is how you get from there to the noun lábukh, about as unobvious a derivative as you could hope to find. But the Romanes (Gypsy) derivation is strengthened by the fact that the prototypical lábukh is a member of a restaurant band, and such bands traditionally featured Gypsy musicians. A most interesting read!

Actually, I asked this question in a Hebrew forum after I came across this quote:

"When you play a wedding in Russia, you don’t want the customer to understand what you’re saying. So labukh or labushnik is a musician, lomir labern means "let’s play," bashalemen means to pay up, and a lazhuk is someone who’s a pain in the butt. My partner Mishka used to say, "Every simkhe, every celebration, has to have a lazhuk, someone who bothers you, who tells you that the music is too loud or too this or too that." That’s a lazhuk."
http://clevelandjewishradio.tripod.com/bezyler.html

Perhaps labaite did come from Romanes gilabe, but perhaps it came into Yiddish first, and only then into Russian. "lábukh" sounds like it could be a Hebrew or German derivative. I posted in a "Russian-Hebrew" forum hoping there could be some Yiddish-speaking people there.

the life of orhan veli