Night Wraps the Sky

"Mayakovsky as better known as a person, as an action, as an event."
Night Wraps the Sky-Writings by and about Mayakovsky, a newly translated volume of poetry edited by filmmaker Michael Almereyda (perhaps best known for his modern dress adaptation of Hamlet starring Ethan Hawke), serves as part biography, part anthology, part manifesto. Mayakovsky, perhaps Russia's greatest Futurist poet, is here shown as perhaps best deserved: madman, artist, troubled youth (he committed suicide at 35), poet, and thug. We are presented with an image of Mayakovsky refracted through eye-witness account, memoir, biography, his own poetry and the poetry of others, leaving one, ultimately, dumbstruck.
http://us.macmillan.com/nightwrapsthesky