Word: poems
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...ideals, saturnalian revelry, and comic twists of fate that they beg for modernization. Claiming such undertakings to be bastardizations, staid classicists might curse the lack of inspiration, the sterility of these transformations. "Myths," said Camus, "are made for the imagination to breathe life into them." John Gardner's epic poem, Jason amd Medeia shows that the modern imagination, violently panting while it makes love to mythology, is still very potent indeed...
There is a mournful formalism about Akhmatova's poetry, a quality that shaped her sentiments in much the way that the laws of nature dictate the beauty of crystals. Her life is reflected in the cold facets of her art. Early poems tell of her unhappy marriage to the Russian poet, Nikolai Gumilyov. A short poem dated 1911 ends: He couldn't stand bawling brats,/ raspberry jam with his tea,/ or womanish hysteria . . . And he was tied...
...marriage dissolved (Gumilyov was later shot by the Bolsheviks), and she withdrew into a brief marriage to an Assyriologist. Unlike many well-known artists, Akhmatova chose to remain in Russia. I am not one of those who left the land/ to the mercy of its enemies begins an uncompromising poem that goes on to be unnecessarily contemptuous of those who fled...
Joining Russia's "inner immigration" of outcast writers and thinkers, Akhmatova lived during the '20s and '30s by translating and scholarship. Stalin's purges, which saw the jailing of her own 20-year-old son, sent her into a new creative cycle. The poems of this period scarcely disguised her bitterness. Shah of the Shahs,/ blessed in Allah's eyes,/ how well did you feast?/ You hold the world in your hand/ as if it were a cold bright bead . . ./ But what about my boy,/ did you enjoy his taste? Although the poem was titled...
...haunted Berryman from his very earliest writing. The Dream Songs are still his most laudable accomplishment. They are not, however, a celebration of any wondrous fairyland of the unconscious mind. Henry, its hero, has "suffered an irreversible loss," and experiences its intensity through his dreams. An earlier "The Ball Poem" reflects the same "epistemology of loss" in a young boy's missing ball. More than anything else, Berryman's dreams are real laments, laced with shattered hopes and withered ideals. Alan Severance too, has very little left to hang onto. His fight for some kind of self-respect is doomed...