There are more reasons for this than I can explain. I have loved and written poetry my whole life since the first grade. Always I was looking for the highest thing. (You know how that is. It goes on forever. You never get to the end of looking for it. And you are always looking for it even when you don't know you are. )
Well one answer is why shouldn't I write a blog dedicated to the Russian poets. They have been through a lot. They have kept their individual souls and their national soul (the best part of it) alive through mind and body numbing experiences.
But beyond this, like many people after reading reams of world wide poetry (as much as I could in English translation) there was a mysterious indefinable and unique beauty there that captivated me.
Also I thought of- (since I was also reading the poetry of all the now independent republics of the former Soviet Union) when I thought of the Russian poets I also meant to say all the other ethnicities and unique individual poets of all those republics, even though I know they would not refer to themselves necessarily as Russian.
Poets and artistic people generally are so often regarded in the West as weak people, prone to suicide, prone to shiftlessness or despicable in other ways. I did not want to think of myself (as a poet) in this way. I wanted to find the most idealistic, the most enduring and the most beautiful thing and I found it in the Russian poets, specifically, Akhmatova, Pasternak and most of all, in Osip Mandelstam. I love all this equally with all the English and American poets. (And by American I mean not only U.S. and Canada (North American), but Central and South American and all the Spanish-speaking poets) not forgetting either, the poets of the former Eastern bloc (Eastern European) countries...the Turkish poets, the Armenian poets, the Arctic poets
and truly every country, every island, every mountain or valley kingdom on this earth and Vietnam and Cambodia and Indonesia and the Philippines and Taiwan and Malaysia and most dear to me, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, England and every pink, blue, green, yellow, violet tinted piece of the globe. We need every poet known and unknown, every poem as much as our own heartbeat.
This is the meaning of, the poem I wrote "Through These Sheer Battlements". In my mind the gold of Shakespeare coexists with that of Mandelstam and in Mandelstam's poem "In Petersburg, We'll Meet Again" (which is somehow a bell always ringing in my mind), I felt- beyond language- someday there will be a world where we all meet in the feeling behind these beautiful, heartbreaking words whether it is Shakespeare, whether it is Mandelstam, or Garcia-Lorca or Verlaine or Rilke or Dante, or Tagore or other venerable poets of China, Japan, Europe, Asia, Persia, Africa or Inuit origin and others whom I don't yet know but whom God surely does and remembers - whatever it is that is poetry, will be forever our own and as incapable of dying as the redeemed soul. And no one can take it from us. Ever.
Also in my poems I always leave the light on, even in a sad poem because I believe hope is the strongest thing. And as it says in the Bible, "the Light shines in darkness".
You realize, don't you, that you write or read from your heart what you think and feel no matter what the consequences. And this is one way to contribute to beauty and truth in the world. And this is most of all something worthy to offer with love and respect to other human beings and with all my heart and bowing down to the ground while keeping the stars in mind, to offer as a child learning always every day how to speak in his or her native tongue, your (my) very own words to God the Father...
Not to be famous, not to be heard by multitudes necessarily is the test of Poetry, Art or Song, but to know the Word sincerely spoken, deeply sung can never die and will be with you even in Eternity (and carry you there when it is time.)
In His Love to all of you forever knowing the best poem for all of us in all troubles and in all joy is to pray without ceasing for what we need in the moment and for each other -and, don't you think - to praise the One who sent us...
Mary Angela Douglas
P.S. Forgive me for not saying, before, dear Germany, Italy, France and Denmark, your fairytales have helped me for a long time only second to God and my grandparents who read them to me, to remain more happily on earth. Thank You.
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