Vasily Chepelev. Poet of Awkwardness. textonly online journal, Issue 52, January 2021
Manichenko is a poet of awkwardness. Minimal declaration, speech that approaches obliquely, avoidance of trauma issues, extreme caution in addressing bodily concreteness (“an elephant named sex” as a symbol of something inappropriate not only in the text but in life) form the basis of Manichenko’s poetics — and this manner refers us, rather, to the poetry of the turn of the century.
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Amidst the carefully lowered pathos in the book, several texts stand out with the most unambiguous pathos. This includes, of course, the cycle "Logocentric Lament," in which the author positions himself in relation to current poetics (“I have a painful opportunity to observe / how the best, most genuine, sincere, and beautiful / intentions captured in concrete words / lose their density and authenticity right before everyone’s eyes”), the multi-part text "Survival Strategy" — a similar positioning in relation to current life strategies, and finally, the poignant love confession in the poem "About Boys."
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Surprisingly, until now, Manichenko's individual texts and collections did not allow one to see his poetry as a case of gay lyricism — and only in this book did several explicit texts put everything in its place. It turned out that the focus on awkwardness and insecurity, military metaphors, senseless wanderings of the characters, and saying quite the opposite of what you want to say — all this belongs precisely to that discourse that came to us from Mikhail Kuzmin and Yevgeny Kharitonov.