The Yalta Stunts, one of the most perfect, charming, and enigmatic works of the always mysterious 20th century underground poet Alvin Krinst, has circulated in hand-printed editions of uneven quality for decades since first published in 1963. Commissioned for the 1945 Yalta Conference and first performed there by Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt themselves, these stunningly original Stunts were not merely important precursors of the artistic revolution of the 1960’s, but potent poetic and political statements in their own right. Sagging Meniscus is proud to at last make available the full, unexpurgated text of this work, with beautifully reproduced illustrations, for the general public. Based on the definitive 1993 revision of Emily MacGregor’s pioneering 1989 variorum edition, and incorporating the results of the latest scholarship, we believe this publication is the first step in bringing to public attention not only a dazzling masterwork of an unjustly neglected literary figure, but a crucial episode in the creation of the post-WWII world order that had almost been effaced, one cannot but suspect willfully, from the historical record.
Read Emily MacGregor’s introduction.
Notices
“An epic collision of the worlds of politics and the avant-garde at a dizzyingly high level…. An absolutely unique, mind- and genre-bending document of a nearly forgotten episode in both art and world history. Beanies, off, gentlemen: a genius!”
—Fafnir Finkelmeyer, author (with J.F. Mamjjasond) of Hoptime
