Straight as an avenue of poplars
When was the last time you received - or wrote - an 18 page letter? I think I have managed...
Waist-high grass
This conjurs a sweeping landscape of a breeze pouring over an endless prairie of grass.
Source: Osip Mandelstam, Journey to...
White-toothed commissars
Perhaps alluding to a world in which commissars, having some status in the pecking order, probably had a better chance...
An event, a happening
Mandelstam lived in a brutal place and time, costing him years of freedom and ultimately, his life. All the...
Raspberry-grey boulevards
Trying to imagine a raspberry-grey boulevard, and can only think of the grey of the road itself combined with a...
Serenade in fur coat
Had to read this one a couple of times – it’s imaginative and convoluted. First the image of ‘the body...
Pink of old roses
Musty pink makes me think of an old breed of faded rose, or a soft-worn damask, or one of the...
A dancing class for trees
Something utterly comforting about orchards, especially old and haphazard ones. But I never thought of them as a dancing class...
To be forever on the road
A marvelous metaphor to describe poetry and its relationship to speaking; I like this notion of realising that speaking is...
Time and poets
This summary of where Mandelstam places the poet versus the ‘man of letters’ on the time spectrum intrigues me. Yes,...
Gift-bearing ambassadorial winds
Having a love of Persian poetry, known only through translation, and of Chinese poetry, engaged with tentatively and carefully in...
Brick-coloured sunsets
Something warming in this, until you see the context. I recall 'brick-coloured sunsets' tinted by a haze of pollution in...
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