Originally Posted by gogant



Asha, that was one glorious tribute for Helios, and Slinger, you never
cease to amaze me with your profoundness. Oh, Pete, your poetry is
simply astounding, to say the least….you have my humble respect.

Originally Posted by ApaqRasgirl

Hey cousin darling, would you stop already posting the same picture over and over in every post, come one my friend you are flooding my email........I love your responses to other peoples comments but this one is getting to be a bit much........still loves ya though.........Namaste.......asha

Originally Posted by Forestbird

It is very interesting discussion. My humble attempts to right poems in English came from reach history of Russian poetic tradition and poetic culture. I cannot even say if there was street poetry in Russia. Poetry was embedded in our life. Our elementary school text books where full of poems of Russian poets of 19 century (Pushkin, Lermantov,Necrasov and so on). Learning poetry by heart was part of the homework starting from second grade.
In late early 70th (when I was in college) poetry got out “on the streets”. Young poets like Evtushenko (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Yevtushenko), Rojdestvenskii, Voznesenskii read their poems on the stadiums (!!) and there where enough listeners to fill the stadiums. And then Bard song or author song movement started. People who started it where mostly belong to professions like geologists, mountain search and risqué –people who spent a lot of time outdoors. Nature is very inspiring and guitar is the instrument that you can take with you in the field. Then this movement become much wider and it create such names as Bulat Okudzhava http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulat_Okudzhava
and Vladimir Visockii http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Vysotsky#English_sources.

In parallel with that there wher tons of poetry clubs and studios. I was member of one of it. We had meetings twise a month and we listen presentations well known published poets and literary scholars. (Evtushenko and Okudzava where welcomed guests there) And each of us had a their own presentation day twice a year when you read your poems and members reviewing it and discussing it.

i need to say that art of poetic translation was very high in Russia. Famous poets did full translation of Shakespear (we had 8 volumes of Shakespear in my house), Robert Berns, Edgar Paw, Bairon. Wolt Witmen. I have never come across Robert frost or Emili Dikenson translations thaw...

And in the same time because of Soviet censorship all of this activity was on the edge of legality, and because of real danger it was even more exiting for young people. And it was real danger. Lots of poetry that has protest or criticism of power went underground. Such poetry has never been published and multiplying and distributing of it was illegal and punishable. Such poetry was retyped on typewriters and where distributed between friends and trustworthy people. Punishment for poets and distributers and gathering hosts varied from beeing expeled from college to prison or even worse - forced psychiatric hospitalisation..

When perestroika come and strit marches become regular part of our lifes poetry reading become part of this huge meetings that accumulate thousands of people.
So Russian poetry is street and academic in the same time.

And now I am elementary school student again, lernig other language and other culture. But I think poetry is just way of thinking and see the world. To be a good poet you have to master the language because it is your instrument, like you can not be good carpenter without knoing technic of building houses and knowing how to use your tools. But in poetry you have to be architect, not just carpenter and this architectural ability is not depend on the language it is your way of thinking and seeing the world