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Lawrence Hall Jul 13
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

Macbeth, Doctor Zhivago, Captain Call, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Allen Ginsberg, and Rod McKuen Visit the Dentist but Have to Wait for Beowulf's Root Canal

         In gratitude for all the wonderful dentists, hygienists, and
                       technicians who keep us chewing!


                                  Macbeth Visits the Dentist

Is this a drill which I see before me
The whirring drill outstretched to my teeth
O happiest gas! Come let me clutch thee!
Before my body I throw my dental shield


                            Dr. Zhivago Visits the Dentist

Poor dental hygiene is for crowds of mediocrities
Only individuals seek dentistry
And they shun those who tolerate bad teeth
How many things in the world deserve our loyalty?

A dentist whose papers are in order


                            Captain Call Visits the Dentist

Call saw that the dentist was looking at him
The nitrous oxide drained out of him
Leaving him feeling tired
“I hate a bad tooth. I won’t tolerate it.”


                 Yevgeny Yevtushenko Visits the Dentist

For a tooth to come out
Some of the pain must be devoted to Stalin
Soviet dentistry demanded happy endings
I knew I could floss and brush better than Mayakovsky
Bella’s teeth were second only to those of Akhmatova
Only I could make Babi Yar all about me and my teeth
When I saw a dentist in Zima Junction
I saw the truth of the Revolution in her little mirror


                     Allen Ginsberg Visits the Dentist

I saw the best teeth of my generation destroyed by sugared sodas and a failure to brush and floss

dragging themselves through the medical complex at dawn looking for a fix

thinning-hair old hipsters burning for relief from aching jaws at the healing hands of dedicated professionals among their shining instruments

dedicated professionals who did not drop out of the University of Arkansas and never saw Mohammedan angels among the rooftops


                                   Rod McKuen Visits the Dentist

I am like a molar; I have chewed alone
Gnawed a hundred hamburgers
Never found a bone
Still and all I’m toothy
Reason is you see
Once in a while along the way
Dentists have been good to me.
Dentistry and literature!
Jeff Stier Apr 2017
I am a collective
an ongoing collaboration
a group enterprise

I revel in my diversity
sit in its lap
while being carefully groomed

Nothing becomes me
like agreement among friends
Nothing fills my sails
like the wind of good company

When all my words
are stilled
when every breath is drawn
then you might come near

When every tale is told
and when myth
becomes gossip among friends
then
and only then
will I willingly depart.

That's the day,
friends,
when we all meet
on that distant shore,
when sweetness dissolves
into the dark.

I have one foot
in the beyond already.
My ticket is punched
my resolve unmatched.

Give me your hand, my friend,
in good cheer
for nothing now will leave us bereft.

Never yet alone
never yet divorced from grace.

Amen.
Dedicated to my distant friend Pradip Chattopadhyay who called me back from the near-death of my poetic impulse.
Mateuš Conrad Mar 2016
i only started collecting a library, because, would you believe it, my local library was a pauper in rags and tatters; apologies for omitting necessary diacritic marks, the whiskey was ******* on icecubes to a shrivel.*

ernest hemingway, e.m. forster, mary shelley,
aesop, r. l. stevenson, jean-paul sartre,
jack kerouac, sylvia plath, evelyn waugh,
chekhov, cortazar, freud, virginia woolf,
philip k. ****, dostoyevsky, aleksandr solzhenitsyn,
oscar wilde, malcolm x, kafka, nabokov,
bukowski, sacher-masoch, thomas a kempis,
yevgeny zamyatin, alexandre dumas,
will self, j. r. r. tolkien, richard b. bentall,
james joyce, william burroughs, truman capote,
herman hesse, thomas mann, j. d. salinger,
nikos kazantzakis, george orwell,
philip roth, joseph roth, bulgakov, huxley,
marquis de sade, john milton, samuel beckett,
huysmans, michel de montaigne, walter benjamin,
sienkiewicz, rilke, lipton, harold norse,
alfred jarry, miguel de cervantes, von krafft-ebing,
kierkegaard, julian jaynes, bynum porter & shephred,
r. d. laing, c. g. jung, spinoza, hegel, kant, artistotle,
plato, josephus, korner, la rochefoucauld, stendhal,
nietzsche, bertrand russell, irwin edman,
faucault, anwicenna, descartes, voltaire, rousseau,
popper,  heidegger, tatarkiewicz, kolakowski,
seneca, cycero, milan kundera, g. j. warnock,
stefan zweig, the pre-socratics, julian tuwim,
ezra pound, gregory corso, ted hughes,
guiseppe gioacchino belli, dante, peshwari women,
e. e. cummings, ginsberg, will alexander, max jacob,
schwob, william blake, comte de lautreamont,
jack spicer, zbigniew herbert, frank o'hara,
richard brautigan, miroslav holub, al purdy,
tzara, ted berrigan, fady joudah, nikolai leskov,
anna kavan, jean genet, albert camus, gunter grass,
susan hill, katherine dunn, gil scott-heron,
kleist, irvine welsh, clarice lispector, hunter thompson,
machado de assisi, reymont, tolstoy, jim bradbury,
norman davies, shakespeare, balzac, dickens,
jasienica, mary fulbrook, stuart t. miller,
walter la feber, jan wimmer, terry jones & alan ereira,
kenneth clark, edward robinson, heinrich harrer,
gombrowicz, a. krawczuk, andrzej stasiuk, ivan bunin,
joseph heller, goethe, mcmurry, atkins & de paula,
bernard shaw, horace, ovid, virgil, aeschyles,
rumi, omar khayyam, humbert wolfe, e. h. bickersteth,
asnyk, witkacy, mickiewicz, slowacki, lesmian,
lechon, lep szarzynski, victor alexandrov, gogol,
william styron, krasznahorkai, robert graves,
defoe, tim burton, antoine de saint-exupery,
christiane f., salman rushdie, hazlitt, marcus aurelius,
nick hornby, emily bronte, walt whitman,
aryeh kaplan, rolf g. renner, j. p. hodin, tim hilton... etc.
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
Yevgeny Yevtushenko died today.  The Penguin Modern European Poets edition of YEVTUSHENKO: SELECTED POEMS was the first book I bought upon returning from Viet-Nam, in the airport in San Francisco.  That paperback is on the desk beside me as I type.

"Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord, and make perpetual Light to shine upon him."
Lawrence Hall Mar 2019
As culled from an arts magazine, 13 March 2019

Socialist Realism - The official doctrine in Soviet art and literature after 1932 that evolved from the traditional commitment to social and civic concerns into an all-pervasive general ideological mandate.

            -Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 20th Century Russian Poetry


collective exhibition space vibe community
interactive narrative brown neighborhood
defined commodified Indigenous
identity tone-deaf decolonial
narratives populist intertwined
exhibition curatorial vision
culture local artists arts district small galleries
DIY spaces speaking out against
gentrification displacing shelter
studio space elsewhere late stage capitalism
collective mantra underdog art savior
corporate entity partnering insensitive
ignorant collective brown people art
contemporary work that may not fit
into establishment art galleries
media advisory venture collaborate
creative community authentic
local statement of expression excitement
creative energy arts district project
many levels collaborate local
creative important creative
community what that collaboration
looks like ongoing local artists going
to be engaged in planning commissioned
project community buy-in consulted members of the creative community Indigenous artists curators museum
directors professors burgeoning landscape
cultural framework critique talk individuals
entities inclusivity open
dialogue opportunities project
conversations collaboration discuss
your projects share our work with you
common ground work together healthy sustainable
accountable decolonization
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Mateuš Conrad Jun 2020
all this en masse... gravity toward...
"sanity" and sobriety...

well... it's the nicety of giving /
stating compliments...

if only there was less
fertile ground:
to make one's arguments for...

if the united kingdom
was more akin to... iceland...

             i drink...
  and that gives me hope
in my original venture:
h'america signed a plot
line division:
to abhor the liquid...

for it brought nothing but ill...
constipated abolitionists...
whiskey frankenstein's
monster's fire: bad... mantra...

in that:
the perverted persuasion
tactic of the... limited sober...
sane... the... cream / rather not:
the creep of the crop...
and this is... somehow...
the **** worthy of harvesting?

one ghost... limping...
dead loitering limb...
a foot... for that crazed
ballerina...
then a jargon of a hand
missing... ghost reading
of braille...
             as one does:
when one's elbow
arrives on the scene...
with... robert downey jr.
and tommy lee jones...

then again... ask...
what is... homogeneity...
to the... russians...
                    sweep-stake
the concept of mongol and orc...
somehow: the old east...
is the new south...
you have an imploded "problem"...
you allow it...
all the circus rights of a democratic
load and loot and allowance...

those... whitey...
masochistic chant-lords...
are no good to begin: governing:
anew...

i hear one more ref. to 1984...
i swear to god...
i'll start the **** book burning
fiasco...
              that's all that's ever recited
these days...
it's not the monolith of the bible
recitation...
it's 1984...
it's not even: homage to catalonia...
it's not even...
the stranger by albert camus...
it's this... fixation on:
this was necessarily true...
it had to be necessarily true:
since... we ensured that it be...
necessarily true!

         brave new world
and 1984: sometimes known as...
the works of prophet isaiah...
and malachi...
or some bogus first choice answers...

it's not like charles dickens...
the pickwick papers are to be cited...
no... ray bradbury's
          fahrenheit 451...
     or "we" by yevgeny zamyatin...
is no... one...
to cite... from...
the master and margarita...
mikhail bulgakov -
then again... again... again...
       he, of our own...
that was always right...
and we... of his own...
dumb enough... to have...
         walked... into his...
prediction... and... gloated at it...
when... walking into it...
**** y'ay: brovado!

          it's one scrutiny to...
blind time with all the omnipresence
of open space...
that there is a future:
you'll forgive me: there isn't one...
it's all... kiss and kick
a donkey with a whipping:
blind... then... fish one out...
for the royal ascot...
with an imaginary carrot...
the stick doesn't mind...
whether it be imaginary:
or detailed...

                  but as long as someone...
somewhere...
    is reading an alternative...
not some... thought-fulfilling gravity
of consorts and bitter bitten knees
with more than mere...
masochism of kneeling on pebbles...
there's the... kneeling...
and the exposed calf... and biting riddles
of... the demon with a name akin
to belzeebub! the one associated
with minding mosquitos!

     sayz who?

that these... people... are well verse...
they cite 1984 by george orwell...
like they might cite the *******
quran...
         because: hey presto!
something is real!
they adore... the past...
catching up to the present...
and the present being
devoid of a future...
who aren't the people...
already drunk from...
something in the past...
   coming true?!

      of fruit:
the U.B.D. the B.B.D.
and the S.B.D.
  i love those acronyms as much as i love...
that... affair with the acronym of...
the idea of USA... prior to...
   the louisiana purchase...
                     that little affair of
anglo-dutch proto-germanicus...
maine... new england...
all that fuzzy jazz and... smog...
and lost clue... for: dreamland of
lingering horror...

  so said the sober and "sane" people...
that sanity of the blah of the herd...
well... yeah...
h'america and probihition...
one of those... moon-milking
nation of narratives...
              how science-fiction was
always to eclipse the science itself.
Mateuš Conrad Dec 2015
it's a paradox of yevgeny zamyatin, that the true rebellion is caused by a stress of the necessity of dreaming... talk to any schizoid individual and you find they're the dream manufacturers... dreams happen in the safe environment of the laboratory of the unconscious... they're the socially acceptable hallucinations... it's even socially acceptable to interpret them... which i find very odd... why should unconscious hallucinations be socially acceptable and profitable and career crafting and conscious hallucinations be socially stigmatised? ah the safety, the environment of the freduain interpretation of dreams: well... he's ******* asleep, isn't he?! ******.

after my usual walks drinking, i tend to enter the
realm of heat and christmas tree
a little bit too brooding,
i just painted a picasso or a kandinsky,
burnt it, and then am told to "plagiarise" it...
i don't like the approach nietczsche had
taking a notebook with him
and writing his thoughts written,
i like the way my faculty memory
eats the immediacy of thinking
as counter to the translation of descartes'
theory equating existence with thought
as if thought could prove i exist
thus uncoupling it from the original:
thought and doubt.
memory is central by comparison,
i have the revision from the miscarriage of descartes'
aim: memini ergo cogito.
it makes sense, given i started the night off
buying three san miguel bottles at tesco,
buying five beers at the turk,
spotting russell the schizoid-affective man
huntched in a corner...
told him five minutes max...
started talking with him
about the ol' sailor's narrative... turbulent noons
and midnights with a bottle of jack...
wide eyed russell every time i speak to him
reflected...
i remember drinking my first coffee aged 7...
i was born with a heart condition...
i shouldn't have... live dangerously though...
drank it... magic!
i remember the taste even now.
the cognitive me is not the existential me...
odd, isn't it?
i should have kept the original kandinsky,
but i burnt it and kept the plagiarism...
why is it that the function of memory
is paramount to mental health?
this prof. of psychology itemised this girl
who's north mania south an airplane descending
from the height vector with the ears popping...
why is it that i can remember me aged 7
and most people got cheated into total engagement
in life in the orientation of satisfied or dis-satisfied
expression of puberty?
if the faculty of memory is not defended
then diseases enter...
not one of the diseased is like an original adam,
like translation of original adam, i.e. mozart beethoven
einstein...
good enough to be without plain jane as narrator
and puppeteer...
let the strings do the talking, please!
i'm in love with ****-****** literature...
take that **** of yours, that suitcase
of ***** stockings to your mother to give it a eco-friendly
spin of the washing-machine...
**** that crap should that crap enter my heart...
you heard of ****** latin? i think you have,
it's not church slavonic, it's rude latin...
the type of thing that adds oil on the cogs
and makes you adherent to the philosophy:
pause for thought or pause for fake vocabulary?
i sweat with oaths to add fluid...
if you're offended by **** and not f
ck you
must be really appreciative of pronography...
so they said: we must rid the word of a vowel
and expose the people with **** corn bits between the teeth!
well... it worked...
i didn't tell you remember the pythagorean theory
you were taught aged 12... i told you
to remember you aged 12... like i remember nathanel
with his briefcase in year 8 in math class...
like i remember this english teacher's legs
when i dropped the pen to loon inside the stash-load
of pooddles and *****...
like i remember racing a guy from bałtów
to ostrowiec and winning: he on a tour de france bike
with anorexic model tires and
my on mountain bike fatties...
i told you memory is crucial... given our thought explored
inanimate things as the perfection of our knowledge,
given our thought explored animate things
as perfectly categorising man and animal alike
thus mis-interpretating ourselves, oh the sacrifice of
the perfectly catalogised atom among the toothbrushes...
a convo of assortments...
it's perfect knowledge in relation to inanimate things...
the sort of thing which is question:
but atoms are animate things... calling them inanimate
just because they're invisible doesn't give you a
right to driftwood clung to in robinson cruseo's shakespearean friday.
hence the passing inspiration... so dull now
that i only feel inspired to pour myself another whiskey
and justify the meaning of relaxed.
associate yourself with the world,
hardly many of us will end of with the genius score of don juan,
we're in an environment of strict biology,
we're told that memory governs our world
with the world being on the quest to repeat...
and it does repeat... sounding the encore of biting frost,
sounding the encore of delighted shadows of summer
having postponed snipers to shoot them dead with night...
the world that inquires per se via repeat
only divinites man's faculty that's memory,
and quickly attacks it in revenge by dementia...
imagination is left to the murderers' who fancy
all the hues of red on the face....
this world is not pleasant to those who think,
to those who couple thought with imagination,
and to those who couple thought with memory...
alas... such few increments are left to re-discover
after being taught the uselessness of centimetre
when no centimetre knowledge is used in their
mechanisation of a profession.
that bit monkey less than man already happened
contradictory in theoretical terms
given the diversity whereby man's diversity
per se cannot explain the diversity of each thing
using evolutionary relativism, niche by-product concerns...
penguins will always make it to antarctica...
no banker or plumber on antarctica... just
scientists who started the whole expedition as
worth anything by counting penguin eggs...
indeed... ah this is going nowhere...
i don't believe in evolutionary relatvism
like socrates didn't believe in moral relativism
theft is punishable with the cutting of the hand
that stole... ****** is punishable with the cutting
of the head - it's all really related)...
and the aesthetic relativism is as true as: beauty
is in the eye of the beholder -
to that girl in the night near the church
walking with a concerned friend
concerned by her attractive panda-eyed mascara expression.
most of the time i find the inherent vice of jungian
interpretation of poets
to be a case of narration: poets don't write enough
to be valued! i respect fictional occupants of the
equivalent hammer of a labourer writing long paragraphs!
well, true enough... any idiot would suddenly exclaim
a symptom as: i differentiate that i'm a constant inspiration
for a non-existent narrator, and the symptom i differentiate
from true to fake by the fact it hinders my faculty to think...
pronoun shrapnel i call it... auxillary pronouns
that benefit me to expand my thought on a levelling
that did not want to see in monochromatic divergence
of continued with linear-ism akin to horse blinders
that only exposed a corridor where a valley could have stood
for the eyes to be inspired by.
Andrew Springer Jan 2013
Yevgeny Yevtushenko*


No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
            Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.
Now I seem to be
                a Jew.
Here I plod through ancient Egypt.
Here I perish crucified, on the cross,
and to this day I bear the scars of nails.
I seem to be
            Dreyfus.
The Philistine
              is both informer and judge.
I am behind bars.
                Beset on every side.
Hounded,
       spat on,
              slandered.
Squealing, dainty ladies in flounced Brussels lace
stick their parasols into my face.
I seem to be then
                a young boy in Byelostok.
Blood runs, spilling over the floors.
The barroom rabble-rousers
give off a stench of ***** and onion.
A boot kicks me aside, helpless.
In vain I plead with these pogrom bullies.
While they jeer and shout,
                         "Beat the Yids. Save Russia!"
some grain-marketeer beats up my mother.
0 my Russian people!
                   I know
                         you
are international to the core.
But those with unclean hands
have often made a jingle of your purest name.
I know the goodness of my land.
How vile these anti-Semites-
                            without a qualm
they pompously called themselves
the Union of the Russian People!
I seem to be
            Anne Frank
transparent
           as a branch in April.
And I love.
          And have no need of phrases.
My need
       is that we gaze into each other.
How little we can see
                     or smell!
We are denied the leaves,
                         we are denied the sky.
Yet we can do so much --
                        tenderly
embrace each other in a darkened room.
They're coming here?
                    Be not afraid. Those are the booming
sounds of spring:
                 spring is coming here.
Come then to me.
               Quick, give me your lips.
Are they smashing down the door?
                                No, it's the ice breaking ...
The wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar.
The trees look ominous,
                      like judges.
Here all things scream silently,
                               and, baring my head,
slowly I feel myself
                    turning gray.
And I myself
            am one massive, soundless scream
above the thousand thousand buried here.
I am
     each old man
                 here shot dead.
I am
    every child
               here shot dead.
Nothing in me
             shall ever forget!
The "Internationale," let it
                            thunder
when the last anti-Semite on earth
is buried forever.
In my blood there is no Jewish blood.
In their callous rage, all anti-Semites
must hate me now as a Jew.
For that reason
                I am a true Russian!
Jim Davis Oct 2018
Aleksandr Pushkin

The Poet
1827
While still Apollo isn’t demanding
Bard at the sacred sacrifice,
Through troubles of the worldly muddling
He wretchedly and blindly shuffles;
His holly lyre is quite silent;
His soul’s in the sleeping, soft,
And mid the dwarves of the world-giant,
He, perhaps, is the shortest dwarf.

But when a word of god’s commands,
Touches his ear, always attentive,
It starts – the heart of the Bard native –
As a waked eagle ever starts.
He’s sad in earthly frolics, idle,
Avoids folks’ gossips, always spread,
At feet of the all-peoples’ idol
He does not bend his proud head;
He runs – the wild, severe, stunned,
Full of confusion, full of noise –
To the deserted waters’ shores,
To woods, widespread and humming loud…  


Translated by Yevgeny Bonver, November 13, 2003
Pushkin is not listed under the Classics tab here in HP, thus I am posting this from https://www.poetryloverspage.com/yevgeny/pushkin/poet.html
Lawrence Hall Apr 2017
All Change at Zima Junction

For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if she were a committee
And asks you what are you doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

“I went, and I am still going.”1


1Yevtuskenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Lawrence Hall May 2019
This is a re-post of "All Change at Zima Junction."  This morning I turned in my keys after some forty years of herding cattle (metaphorically), seventeen of them with this institution.  I am unemployed for the first time since I was five or so and was set to toddling out to the chicken yard every evening to gather the eggs in an old Easter basket.  My mother said that the rooster often chased me and made me cry, but I don’t remember that.

And now - what adventure does Aslan have next for me?

The first book I bought upon returning home from Viet-Nam was the Penguin Modern European Poets paperback edition of Yevtushenko: Selected Poems.  That 75-cent paperback from an airport bookstall in San Francisco is beside me on the desk as I write.

                                     All Change at Zima Junction

                            For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if he were a committee -
He asks you what you are doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

                           “I went, and I am still going.”1

1Yevtushenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Lawrence Hall Mar 2019
“The F_g with the Bow Tie” 1

            “Only in Russia is poetry respected – it gets people killed.
              Is there anywhere else where poetry is so common a  
              motive  for ******?”

                                                -Osip Mandelstam 2

Spain. Poetry got people killed in Spain -
And still wherever tyrants of delicate nerves
And artistic sensitivities hear
Whispered rumors of whispered disapproval

And so an innocent, fearful and trembling
Must be motored away to a moonless death
Upon orders spoken, written, tweeted
Telephoned, telegraphed, or teletyped

One prays he has a moment to adjust his tie
Perfectly - as an honor to Poetry




1 The slur is attributed to Federico Garcia Lorca’s murderers:
https://lithub.com/dictators-****-poets-on-federico-garcia-lorcas-last-days/

2 Quoted by Yevgeny Yevtushenko in 20th Century Russian Poetry
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Lawrence Hall Jan 2018
“Withdrawn from Salem Public Library”

Yevtushenko in a Used-Book Sale

“Salem Public Library, East Main Street,
Salem, VA 24153”
A happy book, thought-stained, and often-read:
An anthology of Russian poetry

Salem, Virginia must be a marvelous town
A library stocked with poetry, and stocked
With poetry readers who have turned again
And again to favorite pages here and there

Long-ago poets murdered by the Soviets
But finding love at last in Salem, Virginia



Re:

20th Century Russian Poetry: Silver and Gold
Selected and with an introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Albert C. Todd and Max Hayward, editors
New York: Doubleday. 1993
Mateuš Conrad Sep 2015
it happened in china, about fifty years ago,
with a singleton clone embryo,
all very barnacle if you ask me,
but not as bonkers as the story from
moscow by yevgeny zamyatin,
anyway... the soloists were split into three
categories - the ones that made
mental games their signature,
the ones that made animals
their buddies... and the third...
oh the ones who started off like ivan
throwing dogs off the kremlin
                    towers to break their legs?
they're the power people ready to
steal a mongol from a war camp
and un-slit his eyes by cutting off the eyelids.
Donall Dempsey Mar 2018
THE WISEST OF LINES - HARMONY SQUARED.

( for Brian Ings )

D-503
kisses I-330.

The kiss is
perfect as an integer.

They are holidaying in
"the capital of the 19th Century"

"Paree
Ahm mais...qui!"

"My...My..My!"
We say...seeing them.

"Nous Autres......n'est-ce pas."

"We never thought we'd live
to see the day!"

1-330 says.

D-503 dog ears Orwell's
1984.

Takes her on his knee.
It's like living a poem.

She kisses D-503
on the tip of his nose

which makes him go
cross-eyed.

She mimics him.
Both burst out laughing.

"Now, it's..."
getting back to the discussion

before the kiss
popped up.

I-330
somehow escaping

The Bell Jar.

"It's like Plath put it
so succinctly...distinctly.

"Poetry is a tyrannical
discipline..."

She too a Sylvia...
throwing off her numbered name.

"Don't you agree
Yevgeny?"

"Mmmmm...!" he mmmmms.

"You've got to go
so far, so fast

in such
a small space."

"True...he says "True!"

"...you got to burn away
all the peripherals!"

And so we leave
Sylvia and Yevgeny

to themselves.
***

We (Russian: Мы, translit. My) is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, completed in 1921

Set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-style.

People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society.The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State.

D-503 meets a woman named I-330.

I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for an impersonal *** visit; all of these are highly illegal according to the laws of One State which disturbs the  dystopian society depicted.

D-503  betrays heer at the end and is amazed that not even torture could not induce I-330 to denounce her comrades. Despite her refusal, I-330 and those arrested with her have been sentenced to death, "under the Benefactor's Machine" which is a bell jar of all things"

This brought me to a Plath quote I rather liked so I threw that into the equation of the poem and factored in that i-330's real name was Sylvia as well. D-503's real name of course is Yevgeny after of course Zamyatin's first name.

The Russian for We is of course My. Hence the "My...My...My!" refrain.

I wanted to give them an alternative life outside of the novel...seeing them in relaxed circumstances in which they have somehow escaped the story of the book and can write their own lives for themselves. I thought maybe they have an alternative life when not being in character for the book and could perhaps step outside of themselves and just be themselves before yet another someone opens the book and they have to jump back into the words and be....those characters. Thought I'd give 'em a break>

Zam the man once said: "True literature can only exist when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics."
I guess I come under the terms madman and dreamer.

So that Yevgeny can be reading Orwell and Sylvia could be discussing Plath.

'Poetry I feel is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space, that you’ve just got to burn away all the peripherals.'

– Sylvia Plath
Lawrence Hall Jan 2018
All Change at Zima Junction

For Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1932-2017

Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction
Changes lives; nineteen becomes twenty-one
With hardly a pause for twenty and then
Everyone asks you questions you can’t answer

And then they say you’ve changed, and ignore you
The small-town brief-case politician still
Enthroned as if she were a committee
And asks you what are you doing back here

And then you go away, on a different train:
Everyone changes trains at Zima Junction

“I went, and I am still going.”1


1Yevtuskenko: Selected Poems. Penguin,1962
An Apology

I have never visited Russia.  I can’t read or speak Russian. Everything in this series is as authentically Russian as a liter of ***** bottled in, oh, Baytown, Texas.  Still, I hope you enjoy this dream-pilgrimage.

I never meant to write poems about Russia, but then I never meant to read Russian literature. The United States Navy was parsimonious in its pay to enlisted men in the 1960s, so the base library and the San Diego Public Library were my free entertainment (as was riding up and down the glass elevator at the Hotel El Cortez, and walking the city and Balboa Park with shipmates), and in illo tempore I happened upon a Modern Library edition of Chekhov’s short stories.

Although Tolkien, McKuen, and other English-language authors have always been my favorites (or favourites), I also found that Russian authors (in translation, of course) also have so much to teach the young and reassure the old. Despite seventy years of horror under Communism, Russia never lost the Faith and never lost her love for literature, literature that shapes chaos into meaning.  In so many ways Russia is a witness to the world.

The first book I bought upon returning home from Viet-Nam was the Penguin Modern European Poets paperback edition of Yevtushenko: Selected Poems.  That 75-cent paperback from a bookstall in the airport in San Francisco is beside me on the desk as I write.

At this point the convention is to write that Yevtushenko changed my life forever, gave me an epiphany, and blah, blah, blah.  He didn’t.  If one’s life changes every time one reads a new author or hears a remarkable speaker or sees a great film, then was there a life to begin with?

But Yevtushenko, Solzhenitsyn, Ahkmatova, Pasternak, Chekhov, and others came to be life-long friends.  And since one writes about friends, I wrote about them too, and one day realized, as P.G. Wodehouse would say, that there might be a book in it.
Donall Dempsey Mar 2020
THE WISEST OF LINES - HARMONY SQUARED.

( for Brian Ings )

D-503
kisses I-330.

The kiss is
perfect as an integer.

They are holidaying in
"the capital of the 19th Century"

"Paree
Ahm mais...qui!"

"My...My..My!"
We say...seeing them.

"Nous Autres......n'est-ce pas."

"We never thought we'd live
to see the day!"

1-330 says.

D-503 dog ears Orwell's
1984.

Takes her on his knee.
It's like living a poem.

She kisses D-503
on the tip of his nose

which makes him go
cross-eyed.

She mimics him.
Both burst out laughing.

"Now, it's..."
getting back to the discussion

before the kiss
popped up.

I-330
somehow escaping

The Bell Jar.

"It's like Plath put it
so succinctly...distinctly.

"Poetry is a tyrannical
discipline..."

She too a Sylvia...
throwing off her numbered name.

"Don't you agree
Yevgeny?"

"Mmmmm...!" he mmmmms.

"You've got to go
so far, so fast

in such
a small space."

"True...he says "True!"

"...you got to burn away
all the peripherals!"

And so we leave
Sylvia and Yevgeny

to themselves.
***

We (Russian: Мы, translit. My) is a dystopian novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, completed in 1921

Set in the future. D-503, a spacecraft engineer, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass, which assists mass surveillance. The structure of the state is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed F. W. Taylor-style.

People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by their given numbers. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society.The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State.

D-503 meets a woman named I-330.

I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks alcohol, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for an impersonal *** visit; all of these are highly illegal according to the laws of One State which disturbs the  dystopian society depicted.

D-503  betrays her at the end and is amazed that not even torture could not induce I-330 to denounce her comrades. Despite her refusal, I-330 and those arrested with her have been sentenced to death, "under the Benefactor's Machine" which is a bell jar of all things"

This brought me to a Plath quote I rather liked so I threw that into the equation of the poem and factored in that i-330's real name was Sylvia as well. D-503's real name of course is Yevgeny after of course Zamyatin's first name.

The Russian for We is of course My. Hence the "My...My...My!" refrain.

I wanted to give them an alternative life outside of the novel...seeing them in relaxed circumstances in which they have somehow escaped the story of the book and can write their own lives for themselves. I thought maybe they have an alternative life when not being in character for the book and could perhaps step outside of themselves and just be themselves before yet another someone opens the book and they have to jump back into the words and be....those characters. Thought I'd give 'em a break.

Zam the man once said: "True literature can only exist when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics."

I guess I come under the terms madman and dreamer.

So that Yevgeny can be reading Orwell and Sylvia could be discussing Plath.

'Poetry I feel is a tyrannical discipline. You’ve got to go so far, so fast, in such a small space, that you’ve just got to burn away all the peripherals.'

– Sylvia Plath
Lawrence Hall Jan 2021
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                Happy Roman New Year - Join me for a Cuppa


                                   I went, and I am still going.

                                       -Yevgeny Yevtushenko
                                             “Zima Junction”


The dogs and I are out on our morning patrol
Greeting the new day, new month, and new year
Greeting the sun as he sings through woods
His song of Creation, Creation-fresh

I have fed the animals, lit the fire
Made coffee to enjoy at my old desk
With Edmondson, Wells, and their pal Shakespeare
And John Senior with his awfully thinky words

Fresh coffee, fresh words for me and for you –
Join me, won’t you, for a merry cup of brew!



I have no connection with the authors or publishers; I simply recommend them to you:

Edmondson, Paul and Wells. All the Sonnets of Shakespeare. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020

Senior, John. Pale Horse, Easy Rider. Lawrence, Kansas, Shakespeherian Rag Press, 1992
A poem is itself.
Lawrence Hall Sep 2023
Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

                         Another Funeral in Margaritaville


                                      Introibo ad altare Dei.

                    Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meum.

                                         -Missale Romanum


Of course all our friends are dying away
Old age sneaks up on us, ghosting us in turn:
Yevgeny, Jimmy, Dusty, Judith, Rod, and we
Who blessed each other in our happy youth

But I tell you we have a duty to sing our songs
Our perhaps artless lines lost long ago
Except that they’re not: we gave them to God
And He joined them to Creation for all of us

Of course all our friends are dying away
Except that they’re not
                                        See you in Margaritaville
Lawrence Hall Oct 2020
Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com
https://hellopoetry.com/lawrence-hall/
poeticdrivel.blogspot.com

                              Lines for Marina Tsvetaeva

        “Her poetry is…passion, pain, metaphor, and music.”

                                 - Yevgeny Yevtushenko

Her words soar over utilitarians
Past pale, pedantic propagandists who
Would wrench all poetry into a cause
As if verse were but a commodity

Her picture on a Penguin paperback
Embraces the viewer, stares back, dares back
Her eyes defiant, her arms folded in hope
Armored in her famous clunky jewelry

She bleeds onto the page, into the soul
Her words, suspended in truth against the age
A poem is itself; Marina was even more truly herself.
Ryan O'Leary Jul 2023
.     Tabla du Diabla


Lucy Feu, Satan’s sister

was seen coming out of

the Limbo council office.


Rumour has it that they

filed a planning request

to extend Hell for an influx

from F.UK.US very soon.


St Peter, because he is

from St Petersburg has

had the monopoly on all

catering contracts, not

just in Heaven, but also

in Purgatory Limbo and

Hell. So, he offered this

most recent to a well known

events manager and cook.


Yevgeny Prigozhin has

accepted and presented

the menu only days ago.


Soup du Jour, which will

never change, is going to

be Chinese Hot and Sour.


The mains will be Chevre

Chaud or Roast Beef or

Hot Dogs served with a

Mustard de Coleman or

Tabasco on a boiled bed

of mashed potato with

red onion dill and pepper.


(Considering that F.UK.US,

are obsessed with Pomme

Frites/Chips/Freedom Fries,

Vladimir Putin intervened

and said they can go to Hell)


A selection of seasonal

charcoal grill vegetables.


Desert was very difficult,

a toss up between Plum

Pudding flamed or Creme

Brûlée torched, the latter

was selected after a vote.


Followed by Toasted Milk

Or Freshly Roasted Coffee.

— The End —