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Misha Mazel
Poet, writer, photographer, illustrator, designer of books and web projects, vice-president of the Russian Writers' Club of New York. He wrote his first poem at the age of 20 in 1987. Author of eleven "chronological" collections of poetry, several books of prose. One of the "Pioneers" of the Internet. Created and maintains the Intellectual Portal "The Ability to Surprise". More than 50 literary and artistic author's projects. Eight photo exhibitions (4 personal) took place. On the poems by Michael - written over a hundred songs by different authors from different countries.
"I paint pictures with verse."
(Preface to the debut collection of poems "Threads of the Road". New York 2001)
The poems of Mikhail Mazel, included in his first book, were written in different years and represent a kind of result of the young poet's work over several years. Fate decreed that these years were not easy for the author, who faced such dramatic trials as the struggle with a serious illness and emigration.
And although these poems are heterogeneous in their level, they are united and cemented into a single book by the author's undoubted literary talent, as well as the purity and ineradicable romanticism of his spiritual aspirations, "the ability to be surprised." Of course, only a poetic eye can mistake the Moon on pink glass for a flower and see that "the stars in the fog are melting quietly, like shadows near rocks."
Behind this joyful, in spite of everything, surprise at the miracle of the surrounding world, behind the naive, youthful lines that are so out of fashion in our pragmatic age, one can easily see the personality of the author himself, arousing obvious sympathy.
I would like to wish him not to lose this bright and optimistic vision over the years, which, perhaps, constitutes the necessary and most important basis of poetry.
Alexander Gorodnitsky.
June. 2000
"" IN YOUR POWER THE CENTER TO BE THE UNIVERSE ... "".
(Excerpts from the preface to the jubilee collection of poems "Such a Process." New York 2017)
... In this book, in the introductory part and in the afterword in the form of notes, the author calls himself Misha, although on the title page it is written - Mikhail Mazel. “Poet and photographer Misha Mazel,” - this is how the author introduces himself to the reader: as Yasha Kheifets, Misha Elman, Sasha Sokolov ... holy fools in ancient Russia. As in childhood, my mother calls Mila to help wash the frame, and yells into the yard for Misha to go to dinner.
In a strange way, the explanatory sentences in the previous paragraph turn out to be, at the same time, characteristics of the poetic world of the “poet and photographer”: in it there is joy and sadness at the same time, as in the Jewish soul; swagger and freedom from gypsy; the cunning and enlightenment of the holy fools, initiated into the secrets of this world; and childlike spontaneity, gullibility and purity.
This is surprising, because at the age of 49 you still have to manage to preserve all this in yourself and, without splashing, bring it to the half-century anniversary. At the same time, not only the poetic texts themselves, but also their author, Misha Mazel, amaze with their spontaneity, openness, fullness of life.
I would not talk about it if it were not for the quote at the very beginning of the poetry collection: “At the age of 26, I suddenly started having problems with my legs. I stopped walking. The cause was in the spine (congenital genetic disorder). The details are of no interest to anyone and have nothing to do with poetry. After three operations, it became clear that he would not be able to walk. After I ended up in a wheelchair, my family decided to emigrate. (Before that, no one had such thoughts). "
And now let me remind you: fun, gypsy looseness, childish purity and gullibility. And the world around you, which you have been observing since the age of 26 from a wheelchair.
And the world around, which you thank in each text for the joy of being in it ...
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No suffering, self-pity, envy towards two-legged sapiens, resentment towards the world. Imagine: after all, in his position - confidence in a happy tomorrow and every moment experienced, at least in texts, the joy of an enchanted soul thrown into this colorful, magical world.
We are easily deceived. We are gullible like chicks.
And sometimes we are not transparent to the light ...
That's all the complaints about the world, they say, it is easy to deceive. But this does not disappoint, it does not make the poet unhappy.
This, at first glance, contradicts the well-known maxim of Ortega y Gasset: "I am 'I' and my circumstances." Contradicting, if you focus on nightmarish circumstances. And not at all, if we take into account the vitality of the "I", then the very cosmic principle in the "I", which, when put on paper, becomes lyrical, that is, truly human. And if poetry, as the same Brodsky wrote, is "the highest form of the existence of language," then the poet is not only "the means of existence of language," but also the highest form of the existence of life. Life, as the first and life-affirming Word.
The window flew through the snow.
Branches of cracks stretched behind him.
The woman's eyelids trembled behind him.
I didn't see it in a dream.
I heard singing through the groan.
There, under the whitewash blizzard
white piranhas raged,
striving to the window from all sides,
devouring time on the way ...
The window flickered, but did not go out.
That woman ... kept the oil
and I could not forbid her
sad and sing, making the bed,
blink and wait, clutching the lamp ...
She ... (not me) at the edge of the ramp ...
She ... (not me) is looking into a blizzard.
If you think about this poem, if you compare it with something similar in Russian poetry, taking into account, of course, where is "Cervantes" and where is "Menar", then you will understand - this is a genuine revelation! Like the entire book by Mazel, "Such a Process", written at the beginning of the 21st century by a poet who, every moment, overcoming space, lives in a time so joyful that it is not even funny to compare it with our astronomical one.
And this is as unique as a phenomenon - Misha Mazel - in itself.
And this takes place as one of the main laws of nature.
Actually, this is what Tevye the milkman says: “The violinist on the roof sounds crazy, doesn't it? But here, in the village of Anatovka, each of us is, one might say, a violinist on the roof, trying to extract a pleasant, simple melody without breaking our neck. "
Gennady Katsov.
2017
"Space Organizer".
(Preface to the thematic collection of poems "Building Space". New York 2017)
The creation of Worlds is the lot of the Chosen.
Only a few are able to grasp the familiar with a glance, dissolve in it and mold themselves into Something New. Some do so, following a feeling and an image, others - in pursuit of a thought or in search of an idea, others - following norms and rules ... And only poets build and destroy spaces out of words and meanings, like fantastic characters in one of the stories of the Strugatsky brothers, “capable only to build and destroy castles "... Poets - like those" gigantocheira "- mythical giants - creators and destroyers of Worlds, useless from the point of view of the everyday consumer:" Who needs your castles ?! Who are all these worlds of yours for ?! "
Poetry and Architecture are surprisingly similar in essence. Their goal is the creation of the New. A new form, a New Man, a New World ... They are based on the structure, construction, structure, addition - verse, volume or space.
The poet, as well as the architect, organizes, builds a space of forms and meanings, creating his own "habitat".
"Verse is the Poet's habitat."
His own world, his personal space. Surprising and paradoxical. Limitless and concentrated at one point - at the tip of the pencil. Both verbal and visual at the same time. With the beginning, which is found again and again "at the end of the segment" ...
… The violation of symmetry between the view and the immersive landscape leads to the inevitability of thinking about details. With a familiar movement, making metamorphoses with stairs in vector graphics and understanding, like in school arithmetic, in atypical geometry, the oddities of which arise in space like in a camera obscura, we peer through poplars, trying to comprehend the audacity of the theory of large and small explosions and remain at a loss: "Details? - Rubbish! "
The construction of Space begins with the words "I see ..."
"I see space ... poems", "I see space ... of the World"
A small turtle, peeking out of its shell on the move, sees the space arranged outside Her “hidden I” as if it were its center, support - the very Turtle of the World Device, the basis for constructing Space, the basis of its composition.
The poet, like the architect - the composer of Space, its organizer, not only the next, but also creating the laws of its construction -
"The laws of the construction of worlds
Quite simple ...
Everything is created by us ... "
A person whose search is a path calling us with him to the country invented by him “where all people are poets” ...
An artist who is building a new world, full of light and the desire to “hear“ We ”in it ...
A turtle holding on itself the whole World, where always "the sky remains blue" ...
Space Organizer ...
Poet Mikhail Mazel.
“You know how to change and not change
The space entrusted to you and me ... "
Vladimir Kuzmin. Architect.
2017
"We are all naked before the gaze of the stars ...".
(Excerpts from the introduction to the thematic collection "Urban Pastoral". New York 2016)
... Mikhail Mazel - listening, reading, listening and rethinking the words, rhythm and music of teachers also came to the realization that there is a slightly different way - to take everything that is dear in one of his cities, and in fact the city itself, and settle with him in another city, also gradually became their own. And these cities over time in his model of the universe, as well as the names of the phrase in this book, will not become antipodes, but will complement each other, for example, on the planet Sinegoria, one of the first network projects of Michael, where there is no separation or borders, but in excess there is warmth and kindness, a “pastoral” sense of belonging in its own way.
This rare, metaphysical gift - not to leave your city, but to take it with you and have it nearby - is given to very few. There are such precedents in world art - for example, a kind, lovingly chosen Vitebsk, resettled by Marc Chagall to Paris and presented to the rest of the world in unforgettable colors of eternal flights in the Belarusian sky. I was lucky to be acquainted with Alina Ibragimovna Litinskaya, the daughter of a wonderful Kiev artist, a talented musician who became a bright, filigree poet precisely during the process when she transported and surrounded herself with the unique aura of the city, which Mikhail Bulgakov wrote with a capital letter. And I'm not the only witness to this, how organically, light and comfortable Kiev was in Alina's small apartment on the shore of Lake Michigan, in the suburbs of Chicago. I am sure that it is precisely the kind and poignant hypostasis of Moscow, which the Mazel family brought to the East River and Hudson delta, that staying in these coordinates is quite to your liking.
I would like to think that the title of this collection of poems will eventually become a kind of direction. Indeed, in fact, it already exists. And if this is so, then, in my opinion, Mazel's lines, rare in their piercing brevity of the definition of this very essence, will take their due place in a series of poems written in this stylistic vein:
The trees rise
made of stone.
They branch out like a memory.
They are surrounded by buildings.
and I am amazed at ignorance,
and pity is woven into the exhalation.
This author is inherently intimate. He does not broadcast from a pedestal. He does not seek to join the poetic avant-garde. He is not a constant, familiar frequenter of literary readings and meetings, so frequent in the capital of the world, which he contemplates every morning from another, not glamorous, New Jersey shore of the Hudson. Mikhail is in no hurry to stake out a place or niche in the next reincarnation of Olympus. In his world, patient, verified work on a syllable or image is natural, where scrupulousness will not necessarily lead to an ideal generally accepted at one stage or another, but the end result will certainly be talentedly organic. Misha will not flaunt the main life discovery of Socrates, he will simply organically, in due time and in his place, quietly agree with him:
And it's not about the era, not about love,
not that the familiar look is unfamiliar,
I believe in stupid dreams the same way
And where is the answer? There is only one answer - "I don't know ..."
Mikhail Mazel does not really advertise that a large number of songs have been written on his poems. His co-authors live in different countries and sometimes can adhere to diametrically opposed views, both creative and political, but in a common denominator, perhaps even the only one, that inevitably unites them in New Zealand and Russia, Canada and Ukraine - this is music written on the verses of one poet, every morning from a close distance seeing the island of Manhattan through the window. The fact that music is written on his poems is by no means surprising, but rather natural: from early childhood, dad led him to the understanding that music is the very harmony without which the existence of this world would not make sense. Music is latent and initially present in the poetry of this poet, again not loudly, and very naturally:
My heart told me: "Here ..."
Reason was aware that the city was dreaming.
And I just wanted to sit down
and catch snowflakes on your eyelashes.
I hardly believe in miracles
but pinned a business card to the bench.
The wind instantly threw
snowed my humble attempt.
.....
Gary Light.
2016
An excerpt from the review of the poem "Legends of the Weapons of the Immortals"
("New magazine" # 279)
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... In communication with Mikhail Mazel, he was always pleased with his passion for art and various creative ideas. He is still busy with new projects, into which he goes headlong, and works with enthusiasm until another new book of his or a series of "photogenic" cityscapes appears, which he expertly searches and finds in his giant New York. Mazel is also a great music lover: he has dozens of poems on a musical theme.
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Valentina Sinkevich.
2015
