I realize this is tangential to the list, but I'd like to make a plug for

my friend Robert Chandler's new Penguin Book of Russian Poetry from

Pushkin to Brodsky. This is the most complete collection of Russian poets

by the best translators now available in English. The introduction and

notes are quite helpful in understanding such a wide chronological range

of poetry. For those who prefer electronic readers, there is a Kindle

edition.



A good case can be made that Russia has given us the greatest single

creative feat in western poetry from the late 19th century to the late

1970s. I still remember the almost explosive impact that the late and much

lamented Andrey Voznesensky made on me when he read his poetry at the

University of Oregon back in the early 60s. I was then a grad student in

Classics and served as photographer for the Daily Emerald, so I got to

meet and shoot him for the newspaper.



A European war seems increasingly likely, one Russia will win at enormous

cost to the Ukraine, the EU and ultimately to the Empire of Chaos. We will

be lucky to avoid a nuclear exchange as Gorbachev has lately been warning.

In a prelude to war later this year, let me offer Andrey Voznesenky's

great antiwar poem, "I am Goya," which I personally heard him recite

during his reading. The verbal music cannot be duplicated in English. He

was a dynamic, almost overwhelming reciter of poetry. I might add that I

consider this along with Celan's "Todesfuge" the two greatest antiwar

poems.



Андре́й Андре́евич Вознесе́нский (1933-2010)



Я – Гойя!

    Глазницы воронок мне выклевал ворон,

    слетая на поле нагое.



Я – Горе.



Я – голос

    Войны, городов головни

    на снегу сорок первого года.



Я – Голод.



Я – горло

    Повешенной бабы, чье тело, как колокол,

    било над площадью голой…



Я – Гойя!



О, грозди

    Возмездья! Взвил залпом на Запад –

    я пепел незваного гостя!

    И в мемориальное небо вбил крепкие звезды –

    Как гвозди.



Я – Гойя.



Pay attention to this stanza because it's what will happen to the US if it

arms and the sends NATO forces into the Ukraine:



О, грозди

    Возмездья! Взвил залпом на Запад –

    я пепел незваного гостя!

    И в мемориальное небо вбил крепкие звезды –

    Как гвозди.



As both Churchill and Viscount Montgomery stated, the First Rule of War

is: Never make war on Russia.



Here is Stanley Kunitz vapid version:



I am Goya

    of the bare field, by the enemy’s beak gouged

    till the craters of my eyes gape

    I am grief



I am the tongue

    of war, the embers of cities

    on the snows of the year 1941

    I am hunger



I am the gullet

    of a woman hanged whose body like a bell

    tolled over a blank square

    I am Goya



O grapes of wrath!

    I have hurled westward

    the ashes of the uninvited guest!

    and hammered stars into the unforgetting sky – like nails



    I am Goya

    (translated from the Russian by English trots)

    -

Steven Willett

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