Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West

Description

This exploration of poetry and national life in Poland and Russia from 1917 to the present also offers a comparative study of the poetry of the Eastern and Western sides of the “iron curtain,†? and an examination of these topics in light of Western postmodernist philosophical theories. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Acknowledged Legislation 1. Courting Disaster: Blok and Yeats 2. Whitman, Mayakovsky, and the Body Politic 3. The Death of the Book à la russe: The Acmeists under Stalin 4. Akhmatova and the Forms of Responsibility: The Poem without a Hero 5. Avant-garde Again, or the Posthumous Polish Adventures of Vladimir Mayakovsky 6. Bringing Up the Rear: The Histories of Wisława Szymborska 7. Counterrevolution in Poetic Language: Poland’s Generation of ’68 8. The Unacknowledged Legislator’s Dream: Czesław Miłosz and Anglo-American Poetry Afterword: Martyrs, Survivors, and Success Stories, or the Postcommunist Prophet Notes Credits Index