Favorites. 1972-2022

The book brings together the main works of one of the brightest Russian poets of our time – Bakhyt Kenzheev. His creativity became a bridge between cultures, times, and geographies. From the early poems "From the First Book" to the subsequent texts written outside of the homeland, the book reveals the evolution of the author – a philosopher, ironist, and lyricist, for whom displacement has become a metaphor for the eternal search for meaning. The cycles included in the collection ("Autumn in America", "Messages. Montreal", "The Age of Disenchanted Sigh") send one into a world of nostalgia for eternal roots, dialogue with the past and present, aphoristic reflections on love, time, and creativity ("From the book amo ergo sum", "The Composer of Stars"). Here, piercing confessionalism ("Confessing at Dawn" – winner of the "Anti-Booker" prize), intellectual play ("The Serf of Cooling Places" – holder of the "Russian Prize"), and bitter self-irony ("From the cycle 'Bright Future'" ) coexist. The special value is represented by poems from later books ("Elegies and Other Poems", "Prewar"), where Bakhyt's mastery reaches virtuosity: the images gain almost cinematic clarity, and the thought balances on the edge of paradox. The Selected Works is a journey through epochs and geographies, where each text sounds like the monologue of a "Russian Kazakh" or an "American Muscovite"... Poetry remains beyond boundaries and beyond time.