Alexei Maximovich Parshchikov (25 May 1954 – 3 April 2009) was a Russian poet, critic

Critic

A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...

, and translator

Translation

Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. Whereas interpreting undoubtedly antedates writing, translation began only after the appearance of written literature; there exist partial translations of the Sumerian Epic of...

.

Born in Olga

Olga, Russia

Olga is an urban locality and the administrative center of Olginsky District of Primorsky Krai, Russia, situated on the Olga Bay of the Sea of Japan, northeast of Nakhodka. Population:...

, Primorsky Krai

Primorsky Krai

Primorsky Krai , informally known as Primorye , is a federal subject of Russia . Primorsky means "maritime" in Russian, hence the region is sometimes referred to as Maritime Province or Maritime Territory. Its administrative center is in the city of Vladivostok...

, Russian SFSR to the family of a famous physician, Maxim Reiderman (:ru:Рейдерман, Максим Исаакович), and a surgeon, L.S. Parschikova, Parshchikov was raised in the Ukrainian SSR

Ukrainian SSR

The Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic or in short, the Ukrainian SSR was a sovereign Soviet Socialist state and one of the fifteen constituent republics of the Soviet Union lasting from its inception in 1922 to the breakup in 1991...

 and attended the Kiev Academy of Agriculture. He spent two years as an agricultural scientist before entering Maxim Gorky Literature Institute

Maxim Gorky Literature Institute

The Maxim Gorky Literature Institute is a higher education institute in Moscow. It is located at 25 Tver Bulvar in Central Moscow.It was founded in 1933 on the initiative of Maxim Gorky, and received its current name at Gorky's death in 1936....

 (graduated in 1981).

In 1993, he received an MA from Stanford University

Stanford University

The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...

. His dissertation was devoted to the works of Dmitri Prigov

Dmitri Prigov

Dmitri Aleksandrovich Prigov was a Russian writer and artist. Prigov was a dissident during the era of the Soviet Union and was briefly sent to a psychiatric hospital in 1986....

.

Parshchikov was regarded as the major figure of the Meta-metaphorist movement (a Russian poetic movement called by some critics "Meta-realism"

Metarealism

Metarealism is a direction in Russian poetry and art that was born in the 1970s to the 1980s. The term was first used by Mikhail Epshtein, who coined it in 1981 and made it public in the Soviet magazine "Voprosy Literatury" in 1983; see below his "Theses on Metarealism and Conceptualism" from 1983...

), which Parshchikov founded along with Aleksandr Eremenko, Ivan Zhdanov and Ilya Kutik. In the last two decades, his works have been translated into fifteen languages. His publications in English include Blue Vitriol, translated by Michael Palmer

Michael Palmer

Michael Palmer is an American poet and translator. He attended Harvard University where he earned a BA in French and a MA in Comparative Literature. He has worked extensively with Contemporary dance for over thirty years and has collaborated with many composers and visual artists...

, Michael Molnar, and John High and with an Introduction by Marjorie Perloff

Marjorie Perloff

Marjorie Perloff is an Austrian-born U.S. poetry critic.Perloff was born Gabriele Mintz into a secularized Jewish family in Vienna. Faced with Nazi terror, her family emigrated in 1938 when she was six-and-a-half, going first to Zürich and then to the United States, settling in Riverdale, New York...

 (Avec Books, 1994).

He resided in Cologne

Cologne

Cologne is Germany's fourth-largest city , and is the largest city both in the Germany Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia and within the Rhine-Ruhr Metropolitan Area, one of the major European metropolitan areas with more than ten million inhabitants.Cologne is located on both sides of the...

, Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and died there.

External links

• Bard Without Borders: for a Russian poet, freedom poses challenges
• Oil, This poem by Alexei Parshchikov is translated here as a collaboration between Sergey Levchin, Richard Wayne Chambliss, Jr., and what is described as "Parshchikov's interlinear, editorial feedback from the poet Eugene Ostashevsky".
• Alexei Parschikov 1954–2009 This "cyber-tombeau
  Tombeau
  A tombeau is a musical composition commemorating the death of a notable individual. The term derives from the French word for "tomb" or "tombstone". The vast majority of tombeaux date from the 17th century and were composed for lute or other plucked string instruments...
  
  " at Silliman's Blog by poet Ron Silliman
  Ron Silliman
  Ron Silliman is an American poet. He has written and edited over 30 books, and has had his poetry and criticism translated into 12 languages. He is often associated with language poetry. Between 1979 and 2004, Silliman wrote a single poem, The Alphabet...
  
  includes comments, tributes, and links