Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, LETTERS TO YESENIN: 26, by JAMES HARRISON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

LETTERS TO YESENIN: 26, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Going in the bar last sunday night I noticed that they were having
Last Line: The pasture.
Alternate Author Name(s): Harrison, Jim
Subject(s): Despair; Yesenin, Sergei (1895-1925)


Going in the bar last Sunday night I noticed that they were having high-school
graduation down the street. Caps and gowns. June and mayflies fresh from the
channel fluttering in the warm still air. After a few drinks I felt jealous and
wanted someone to say, "Best of luck in your chosen field," or, "The road of
life is ahead of you." Remember your first trip to Moscow at nineteen?
Everything was possible. You watched those noblewomen at the riding academy who
would soon be permanently unhorsed, something you were to have mixed feelings
about, what with the way poets suck up to and are attracted to the aristocracy
however gimcrack. And though the great Blok welcomed you, you felt tentative,
an unknown quantity, and remained so for several years. But how quickly one
goes from being unknown and embarrassed to bored and arrogant, from being
ignored to expecting deference. From fleabag rooms to at least the Plaza. And
the daydreams and hustling, the fantasies and endless work that get you from one
to the other, only to discover that you really want to go home. Start over with
a new deck. But back home all the animals are dead, the friends have
disappeared and the fields gone to weed. The fish have flown from the creeks
and ponds and the birds have all drowned or gone to China. No one knows you -
they have little time for poetry in the country, or in the city for that matter
except for the ministrations of a few friends. Your name bobs up like a
Halloween apple and literature people have the vague feeling that they should
read you if they ever "catch up" on their reading. Once on a train I saw a girl
reading a book of mine but she was homely and I had a toothache so I let the
moment pass. What delicious notoriety. The journalist said I looked like a
bricklayer or beer salesman, not being fashionably slender. But lately the sun
shines through, the sweet release of flinging these lines at the dead, almost
like my baby Anna throwing grain to the horses a mile away, in the far corner of
the pasture.





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