Abstract

The article examines the genre of “definition of poetry” in the poetic oeuvre of Yan Satunovsky (1913–1982). Analyzing Satunovsky’s poems that define or characterize poetry, it traces his engagement with questions of poetics and his continued dialogue with the Russian poetic tradition, including such authors as Boris Pasternak, Georgy Obolduev, and especially Boris Slutsky, one of the few officially recognized contemporary poets whose work Satunovsky admired. Satunovsky’s definitions of poetry engage with broad questions about the nature, purpose, and possibilities of poetry itself – with some key ideas summarized in his famous monostich, “The most important thing is to have the audacity to know that this is poetry”. They also reflect both his avant-garde heritage and his position as an unofficial poet. The analysis reveals how Satunovsky”s definitions of poetry often combine elements of that legacy with a distinctively ethics-inflected approach to poetic material.