The world of poetry

As well as having a mood meter I used to include and regularly change quotes in my email signature to reflect my mood, to highlight important experiences or just share some words that I found beautiful. So I thought I’ll add “Quote of the week” posts to this blog.

But in my experience poetry speaks to you either at first sight or not at all. A flash of revelation and a flash of response. Like lightning. Like falling in love.
J. M. Coetzee "Disgrace"
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At first my whole world of poetry consisted mostly of Pushkin, Lermontov and Esenin. And then one day I read Irina Odoyevtseva’s “On the banks of the Neva” and was introduced to the poetry world of St Peterburg at the beginning of 20th century. I was able to find a small tome of Silver Age poets and fall in love with exotic themes in Gumilyov’s poems, with romantism of Tsvetaeva, with quirkiness of Osip Mandelshtam. Few years later I had a chance to read most of the published poems of Anna Akhmatova in the chronological order and was struck by being able to trace her life through her poems, by the strength of her character.

I recently finished reading Odoyevtseva’s second book “On the banks of the Seine” (Ирина Одоевцева - На берегах Сены) and again was inspired to write down a long list of books I want to read, people I want to find out more about. I still sadly read too few of beautiful Russian poems.
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I also recently finished Emily Bronte - Wuthering Heights. Mum, I think you’ll like it. How did I miss out on reading it before? Now I want to read Gaskell's "The Life of Charlotte Bronte" . Seems like every book recently leads to at least one other.