"what a poet and the clear water is thick with bloody blows on its head. I embraced a cloud But when I soared it rained." --Frank O'Hara, "Mayakovsky" (1954) Mayakovsky's is one of the most compelling voices in twentieth-century Russian poetry. Born in 1893, he joined the Futurist movement in 1912 and soon established himself as one of Russia's major poets. In 1917, he rallied to the Russian Revolution...