Timur Kibirov earned recognition in the early years of perestroika for his carnivalizing, grotesque innovations in the Russian poetic tradition of lyrical commentary on acute social and political topics. He became known as one of the poets of Moscow conceptualism, along with Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Prigov and Lev Semenovich Rubinshtein. Kibirov's strategies, however, proved broader than the conceptualist (or postmodernist) deconstruction of authoritative cultural languages and traditions. He demonstratively combines the most canonical meters and diverse quotations with recognizable details of "public" life (ranging from public toilets to the army). Perhaps the most confessional poet in contemporary Russian literature, he invariably achieves an effect of striking sincerity. At the same time, many scholars have noted a link between Kibirov's poetics and the generic tradition of the song, specifically the Soviet song. Tat'iana Cherednichenko writes "In Kibirov's texts an amalgam of popular refrains and phrases that constituted either the thought...