Eternal Stimulus: Poems and Verses

Igor Kohanovsky is a legendary person in his own right. Born in Magadan, where his father, a "sailor who made the revolution", worked for some time in the "Dalstroy" system, he grew up in Moscow, played hockey during his school... years, training with the famous athlete Anatoly Tarasov, sat at the same desk and was friends with Vladimir Vysotsky, whom he taught to play guitar and who dedicated 5 of his songs to him (the most famous being "My friend went to Magadan"); he graduated from MISI and worked as a foreman - building the Moscow microdistrict Khimki-Khovrino; after changing his profession from engineer to journalist, he worked for four years at the newspaper "Magadan Komsomolets"; he became famous as the author of numerous songs performed and being performed by stars of the Soviet and Russian pop scene... His biography is so full of events that it is impossible to convey it either in a short annotation or even in a lengthy essay... But it seems that Kohanovsky is one of those who "never tires of life": his feelings are alive, reactions to what is happening are refreshingly youthful and relaxed. His lyrics from the seventies to the present time exemplify immediacy, naturalness, even conversational quality - but behind its simple and everyday intonation is enormous experience, a high culture of verse, and absolute human reliability.
Kohanovsky is one of the glorious galaxy of Moscow urban lyricists of the seventies, becoming more open, clearer, and more compassionate with the passing years. Today's reader keenly lacks such a conversational partner. The poems and lyrics of Igor Kohanovsky are an excellent example of resistance to officialdom, banality, and brutality; they embody nobility, openness, and precision of word. This is precisely what the poems and verses included in this collection testify to.