~struck by lightning and poetry of Anna Akhmatova~

[amuse]

WOW Koa, I love you - thank you!!!
*For clarification :D, Koa mentioned Anna Akhmatova, and I googled her...am giddy at the moment

just read "You Will Hear Thunder" http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=13 and "You Thought I Was That Type" http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?wid=12 - they're the sort of music that you have to absorb into your bones.

What have you read of hers? What can you recommend?
(asked the kid in the candy store:D)

[Koa]

http://jill.jazzkeyboard.com/akhmatova/

http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/akhmatova/akhmatova_ind.html

This is all I found in English... One poem I loved is 'my hands clasped', which is the first one we analysed at the course...

My hands clasped under a veil, dim and hazy…
"Why are you so pale and upset?"
That’s because I today made him crazy
With the sour wine of regret.*

*this line in russian says: I made him drink my bitter sadness until I made him drunk... so MUCH more effective!!!
Btw, in the original there's no 'upset', only 'pale'


Can't forget! He got out, astound,
With his mouth distorted by pain...
I, not touching the railing, ran down,
I was running to him till the lane.

Fully choked, I cried, “That's a joke --
All that was. You get out, I'll die."*
And he smiled very calmly, like stroke:
"It is windy right here -- pass by."**


*and this should be: if you go away I'll die
** here it says: don't stay in the wind, in the sense a mum would say it to a kid: don't get cold...


*notes by Koa
...I added those notes cos they're details in which the teacher focused (I mean, we read the poem in Russian and she explains the words we dont know, then we anlyse language and everything... I wish i was able to anlayse poetry on my own!). I feel so much the sense of loss in her poetry, it makes me also think of The Cure's lyrics... And as I said, I'm so fascinated by concrete details in poetry...

Yesterday we read a poem I loved so intensely that I'm trying to learn by heart... Sadly I have found no translation of it yet, but I feel so much that I understand perfectly what she means... basically, to keep it very short, it's sor t of a little movie...she meets a guy and likes him but at the same time she's scared about love...cos I see it like she fears that love might make her lose her independance... I'd ramble on for ages on this but I want to look for a translation or translate it myself to give you the impression of the meaning...

[Demona]

more of her in Eng.
here (http://www.kulichki.com/poems/Poets/aa/Eng/aa.html)

here (http://www.ualberta.ca/~lmalcolm/poetry/acmeists.html#anna)

here (http://cmgm.stanford.edu/~ahmad/akhmatova.html)

also here (http://www.geocities.com/ilya_shambat/akhmatova.html)

Perhaps these you have read already, but perhaps you will find something new as well.

Her poetry is definitely worth reading. And don't stick to recomendations only, for tastes differ.

[amuse]

i really :) like "Our Native Earth. (Koa's 2nd link.) ooh: "Departure" (Demona's 3rd link) is - well it just is. that's poetry for you. great ending.

hadn't mentioned earlier, the ones I looked at first are here: http://plagiarist.com/poetry/?aid=1.

it will take a while to breathe these in, and there are so many. as little as i like it, will have to go slowly.

[Koa]

I found out that the title of that poem I love translates to 'Confusion' (ÑÌßÒÅÍÈÅ if you can view the cyrillic... Smyatenie in transliteration), but I haven't found a translation of the poem yet... amuse did you find it, by chance?

[amuse]

first of all, i came across a great web site: poetry in motion in NYC.
then i found a site which may/may not have had it, but as i haven't any understanding of cyrillic, i don't know.
20 minutes later...i have found site after site, all claiming to have "all" of her poetry posted, but no "Confusion"/"Smatenie." except one spot that cited it but didn't post.
...so this window to your world remains shuttered.
Koa, do you know the first line of this poem, or the date it was written/published?

[amuse]

oops, spelled "Smyatenie" wrong.
but i found this:

The cloud up in the wintry sky was furry,
A squirrel skin, pale grey, a trifle faded.
He said: "You know, I'm not the least bit sorry
That you will melt in March, my frail Snow Maiden."
My hands turned cold inside the muff I carried...
Confusion came and fear, my heart ceased beating.
O how to get them back - that swift-gone, airy
Love and those weeks of it, so brief, so fleeting!
Hate? No. Revenge? What for? I'll do without it.
O to be dead at winter's end and buried!
On Twelfth Night, dazed, I asked the cards about him:
I was his love for most of January.

at http://stpetersburg-guide.com/people/akhmatova.shtml

[Koa]

It is not this one though...

I found a Russian site that seems to have them ALL, literally... but in original.

I don't know the first line of Smyatenie in English, I tried to put some words in google but who knows how it was translated...
It might sound something like 'it was hot because of the heavy lights/and his looks were like rays', but the translator might have used other words... Oh, it was written in 1913 and it's in the book 'Rosaries', I think the very first one there.

Oh the link you gave has Song Of The Last Meeting, I like that one too :)

[flor]

Our hearts don't wear it as an amulet,
It doesn't sob beneath the poet's hand,
Nor irritate the wounds we can't forget
In our bitter sleep. It's not the Promised Land.
Our souls don't calculate its worth
As a commodity to be sold and bought;
Sick, and poor, and silent on this earth,
Often we don't give it a thought.

Yes, for us it's the dirt on our galoshes,
Yes, for us it's the grit between our teeth.
Dust, and we grind and crumble and crush it,
The gentle and unimplicated earth.

But we'll lie in it, become its weeds and flowers,
So unembarrassedly we call it---ours.


1961, Leningrad
from Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova, a great intro to her work