To recite a poem : how does it feel?

It feels like stepping on a grave.

Like standing in a forbidden circle, on the far side of a taboo.

Weird conjunction of word & flesh.

Just one more thought on this for today. This contrast noted earlier between Crane's finish and the others' various ongoing (quasi-narrative, Wordsworthian) agons : how key this is to 20th-cent. aesthetics! (All the debates about "process", the autonomy (or lack thereof) of the art-object, etc.)

And I am reminded again of a remark made to me at a Russ-Amer poetry conference many years ago by Elena Shvarts (we were talking about how the Russians memorized their poems for recital) : "Russian poets compose the poem in their heads, then write it all down. Americans start writing, and it takes them a long time to finish, if they do."

And this notion of finish can perhaps be linked with the notions of the self-sustaining, free-standing image in Crane & Mandelstam et al. Which leads back, ultimately, perhaps, to the Byzantine tradition of the magnetic, charismatic icon.

Sailin' to Byzantium.

There's a fair measure of flowery oratory in the Spanish poets, too. It's an occupational disease. But Brodsky's delivery, as I experienced it, was far more stark & stoic. If you listen to some of the Library of Congress recordings, on the other hand, there's a pathos & quavering intimate weak quality to his voice. (I'm a sucker for the sound of RRRussian, I admit. & Italian. Good essay by Brodsky on Montale. He's buried in Venice, near Pound.)

Yet again, one of the things that possibly makes Brodsky difficult to appreciate is that his poetry is also a kind of anti-poetry. He was an admirer of Auden, Cavafy, Beckett - all poets (in VERY different ways) of the flat ironic unpoetic mundane surreal-comic antipoetic manner. Remember, he was one of the grandchildren of the Giants (Akhmatova, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam). & a near-contemporary of the grandstand Bombasts of the Soviet Cosmos (Yevtushenko, Vozneshenskii...). His prosy antipoetic strictly-metered unmetrical depressing exile as anti-hero mannerisms are a kind of curtain or veil or shield, protecting (as learned in Gulag) his creative process.