This work provides some initial considerations on the experience of translating Russian poetry in Brazil. Our focus is on the poetry of Vladimir Mayakovsky as epitomizing this intellectual challenge and experience with translation in this country. Bruno Gomide, in his important work Da estepe à caatinga, offers a detailed overview of the reception of Russian prose in Brazil. However, comparable work on the reception of Russian verse is still lacking, for the most part. What assessments exist are, at most, sporadic or even contradictory. For purposes of our analysis, we have focused on the publications of Poemas de Maiakovski (1967) and Poesia russa moderna (1968) in order to trace the initial impact of Russian poetry and its unique character in Brazilian translation, especially in the context of the incorporation of Russian verse in Brazilian music. Our approach is aimed to better contextualize the distinct fixation on the figure of Mayakovsky whose poetry is widely read and continuously translated and retranslated in Portuguese to this day.