New Hull

Author: Mikhail Kuzmin

Translator: Simona Eva Schneider

Publisher: Ugly Duckling Presse (2022)

Published as a chapbook 100 years ago, New Hull is a cycle of love poems by Mikhail Kuzmin (1872–1936), Russia’s first openly gay writer, in response to Fritz Lang’s film Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (1922). The poem’s Orphic verse addresses the American playboy billionaire, Edgar Hull, wrestling him back from Mabuse’s oppressive gaze. Kuzmin’s elegy speaks to virtual world citizens, teasing media presence beyond passive-active viewing on a sleepwalker-spectator-dictator continuum, gently steering film plot and allegory into lyric song.