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Showing posts with label Akhmatova. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Akhmatova. Show all posts

Monday, January 20, 2020

Poetry break.

I have been feeling despair over the currently political environment. Who better to describe despair than Russian poet Anna Akhmatova.


Last Toast by Anna Akhmatova

Translated from the Russian by Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky



I drink to our ruined house
To the evil of my life
To our loneliness together
And I drink to you—
To the lying lips that have betrayed us,
To the dead-cold eyes,
To the fact that the world is brutal and coarse
To the fact that God did not save us.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Poetry and its relationship with fiction.

Just like listening to live music or observing paintings, poetry fuels my writing in a potent but indirect way.

I like poetry that explores an emotion or situation with very little meandering. Fiction lets you ramble a little bit, get in-depth thinking.

Poetry helps me keep on track and not be afraid of uncomfortable topics.

Some of my favorite poetry books are:

Beautiful Signor by Cyrus Cassells (a lush and gorgeous romance between two men in Italy)

100 Love Sonnets
and
Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon by Pablo Neruda(anything by Neruda, really. I think I'd read the man's grocery list)

Hafiz and Rumi, naturally.

And the best book about poetry is

How to read a poem and fall in love with poetry by Edward Hirsch. Chapter Eight, Poetry and History: Polish Poetry after the End of the World, is some of the greatest writing ever done on literature.

Russian poet Anna Akhmatova wrote this snippet before her epic poem "Requiem".

In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad. One day, somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from the cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):
"Can you describe this?"
And I said: "I can."
Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what has once been her face.


This is what poetry does for us.