Sleeping on the Wing Challenge: Vladimir Mayakowski (1893-1930)

Someone almost totally new for me this week. I've heard of Mayakowski (or Mayakovsky, as his name is sometimes spelled), but I don't think I've ever read any of his poetry.

First, some poetry:



From A Cloud in Trousers

Your thoughts,
dreaming in a softened brain
like a stuffed lackey on a greasy couch,
I will tease with a blood-soaked scrap of heart
and satiate my impudent, caustic contempt.

There is not a single gray hair in my soul,
there is no grandfatherly gentleness!
Shaking the world with the might of my voice,
I go by--a handsome
twentytwoyearold.

Dear ones!
You play love on a violin.
The crude play love on a drum.
But unlike me, you can't turn yourselves inside out
and become entirely lips.

Out of your cambric drawing rooms,
come and learn,
officious officials of the angelic league.

And you who calmly thumb through your lips
the way a cook flips the pages of a cookbook

If you want--
I'll rage on raw meat
--or, changing tones like the sky--
if you want--
I'll be irreproachably gently,
not a man, but a cloud in trousers.

I do not believe there is a blossomy Nice!
Again I glorify
men as stale as sickrooms
and women as battered as proverbs

___1
You think maleria makes me rave?

It happened.
In Odessa it happened.

"I'll come at four," Maria said.

Eight.
Nine.
Ten.

The evening
fled from the window
into the terror of the night,
leering,
Decemberish.

At my decrepit back
the candlelabras cackled and sniggered.

You won't recognize me now:
a sinewy hulk,
groaning,
writhing.
What can such a huge clod want?
A huge clod can want so much!

Is it really important
whether we are cast in bronze
or whether the heart is a cold piece of iron?
At night I want to hide my clanging
in softness,
in woman.

And so,
massive,
hunched up at the window,
I melt the glass with my forehead.
Will there be love?
And what kind--
a big love or a crumb of love?
How could such a small body have a big one:
it must be a small,
humble love
which shies from the honking of cars
and prefers the bells of horse-trams.

More and more,
nuzzling the rain,
my face against its pockmarked face,
I wait,
splashed by the thundering surf of the city.

Midnight, running loose with a knife,
caught up,
slashed--

get away!
Twelve o'clock fell
like a head from the chopping block.

Gray raindrops on the windowpanes
screamed together,
amassing a mask,
as though the gargoyles
of Notre Dame were howling.

Damn you!
Isn't it enough?
Soon screams will rip my mouth apart

I hear,
quietly,
a nerve jump up
like a sick man from his bed.
Barely, barely moving
at first,
it soon skittered about,
agitated,
distinct.
Two more joined it
falling madly in a desparate dance.

The plaster crashed on the floor below.

Nerves--
big,
little,
thousands of nerves!--
galloped crazily
until
their legs gave out!

But through the room, night oozed and oozed--
a heavy eye could not get out of the bog.

Suddenly the doors rattled,
as if the teeth of the hotel
were chattering.

You came in,
abrupt, like "take it or leave it!"
Maiming your suede gloves,
you said,
"Y'know,
I'm getting married."

So what.
Get married.
It's nothing.
I can take it.
See how calm I am!
Like the pulse
of a corpse.

Remember?
You used to say:
"Jack London,
money,
love,
passion."
But I only saw one thing:
You were a Gioconda
which had to be stolen!

And they stole you.

With the arch of my brows flaming,
I will gamble again in love.

What of it!
Homeless hobos sometimes find
shelter in burnt-out houses!

Are you teasing?
"You have fewer emerals of insanity
than a begger has kopecks!"
Remember!
Pompeii perished
when they teased Vesuvius!

Hey!
Gentlemen!
Amateurs
of sacrilege,
crime,
carnage--
have you seen
the faces of terror--
my face
when
I
am absolutely calm?

I feel
my "I"
is too small.
Someone stubbornly bursts out of me.

Hello!
Who's speaking?
Mamma?
Mamma!
Your son is gloriously sick!
His heart is on fire.

Tell his sisters, Lyuda and Olya,
he has nowhere to hide.

Every word,
every joke
he vomits from his sizzling mouth,
jumps like a naked prostitute
from a burning brothel.

People sniff--
burnt flesh!
A brigade drives up,
shining,
in helmets!
No hobnail boots here, please!
Tell the firemen:
climb a burning heart with gentleness.
I'll do it myself.
I'll pump barrels from tearful eyes.
Brace myself against the ribs.
I'll jump! I'll jump! I'll jump!
Everything has collapsed.
You can't jump out of the heart.

From cracks of lips
a charred kiss throws itself
on a smoldering face.

Mamma!
I can't sing.
In the chapel of the heart
the choir loft catches fire!

Scorched figurines of words and numbers
scramble from the brain
like children from a burning building.
So fear
stretched out
flaming arms on the Lusitania
to clutch for the sky.
Shaking people,
a hundred-eyed blaze bursts
from the docks
into the quiet of the apartment,
Shriek
into the centuries,
if you can, one last cry: Iam on fire!

___2
Praise me!
The great are nothing to me.
On every achievement
I stamp "NIHL."

I never want
to read anything.
Book?
What are books!
___...

___4
Maria! Maria! Maria!
Let me in, Maria!
I can't stay out on the streets!
Don't you want to?
Will you wait
until my cheeks cave in,
sampled by everyone,
then I'll come,
stale.
toothlessly muttering
that today I am
"remarkably honest!"

Maria,
you see--
my shoulders are already drooping.

In the streets
people will poke holes in the fat of four-story goiters,
thrust out their small eyes,
sickly from forty years of dragging about,
to snicker
at my having between my teeth
--again--
the stale crust of yesterday's carress.

The rain sobbed all over the sidewalks;
the scoundrel, condensed into puddles,
all wet, licks the cobblestone-beaten corpse of streets.
And on his gray eyelashes--
yes!--
tears flow from the eyes--
yes!--
on his icicle eyelashes
from the sagging eyes of drainpipes.

The snout of the rain drooled all over the pedestrians,
but flabby athlete after athlete flashed by in his carriages:
stuffed to the eyeballs,
they burst,
grease dribbled through the cracks,
and together with chewed-over rolls
and the cud of old ground meat
it flowed down in a turbid river from the carriages.

Maria!
How can you cram a gentle word into a fat ear?
A bird
begs with songs,
and sings,
hungry and resonant.
But I am a man. Maria,
a simple man,
coughed up by the consumptive night into the dirty hand of
___the Presyana.

Maria, d'you want such a man?
Let me in, Maria!
With convulsive fingers I'll grab the iron throat of the
___doorbell!

Maria!

The street-pastures have gone wild.
On my neck are the scratches of the mob.

Open up!

I'm hurt!

You see--ladies' hatpins
Are stuck into my eyes!

You've let me in.

Darling,
don't be afraid
if sweat-bellied women, like a wet mountain,
sit on my bovine shoulders--
so through life I drag
millions of huge true loves
and a million million vile little loves.
Don't be afraid
if once again,
in the storminess of infidelity,
I cling to thousands of pretty faces--
"admirers of Mayakowsky!"--
this is really the dynasty
of queens ascending the heart of a madman.

Maria, come closer!

Whether in naked shame
or shaking in fear,
just give me the unwithered charm of your lips:
my heart and I have not once lived as long as May,
and in my past life
there are only a hundred Aprils.

Maria!
The poet sings sonnets to Tiana,
but I--
all flesh,
all man--
I simply ask for your body
as a Christian asks:
"Give us this day
our daily bread!"

Maria--give!

Maria!
I am afraid of forgetting your name
as a poet is afraid of forgetting
some word
born in the tortures of nights,
great as god himself.

I will love and cherish
your body
the way an unwanted
friendless
soldier,
war amputee,
cherishes his only remaining leg.

Maria!
Don't you want me?
You don't want me!
Don't you--

Ha!

It means--again
I will take my heart,
spattered by tears,
and carry it
like a dog carries
a paw run over by a train
back to its kennel.

With the blood of my heart I make the road happy,
it sticks like flowers to a dusty tunic.
A thousand times the sun will dance,
like Salome, around the earth,
the head of the Baptist.

And when my collection of years
has danced to the end--
a million bloodstains will be strewn
on the path to my father's house.
___...

Winged swindlers!
Cower in heaven!
Ruffle your feathers in frightened shaking!
You, reeking of incense, I'll rip oen
from here to Alaska!

Let me in!

You can't stop me.
I may be lying,
or I may be telling the truth,
but I couldn't be any calmer.
You see--
they've beheaded the stars
and bloodied the sky with carnage!

Hey, you!
Heaven!
Off with your hat!
I'm coming!

Quiet.

The universe sleeps,
a huge star-infested ear
resting on a paw.

translated by Pete Bogdanoff
excerpted from Sleeping on the Wing by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell

Vladimir Mayakowsky: 411

The Russian poet Vladimir Mayakowsky wrote "A Cloud in Trousers" when he was twenty-two--as he says rather boastfully in his poem, "a handsome/twentytwoyear-old." The story in the poem is that the poet loves Maria, and he's dying to see her. She finally comes to him (very, very late) and says she's going to marry someone else. Who wouldn't be angry? But for Mayakowsky, being angry is like a storm, a volcano erupting, an earthquake. His feelings seem very strong to him, so strong that it seems he can't contain them, can't bear them. He says, "My 'I' is too small for me." By his "I" he means his regular self. His other, poetic, emotional self feels enormous, boundless, and everything that happens to him seems like a tremendous event. He feels he's caught fire, like a part of the city, "A hundred-eyed blaze bursts/from the docks/into the quiet of the apartment . . . I am on fire!" His body is like a building in which thousands of things are happening, all of which he is intensely aware of: he feels "a nerve jump up/like a sick man from his bed." And everything that is happening around him seems just as animated and as violent as what is in his feelings. The clouds are like "white workers breaking up/after declaring a violent strike against the sky"; doors rattle "as if the teeth of the hotel/were chattering"; midnight runs loose with a knife. Even his rare calm feelings are extravagant--he says he can be "irreproachably gentle . . . like a cloud in trousers."

_____Mayakowsky protests, makes announcements, begins the story, then stops and yells. He gets angry again; he makes threats; he talks to the angels; to God; he picks up the telephone in the middle of the poem and starts making emergency phone calls: "Hello! Who's speaking? Mamma? Mamma! Your son is gloriously sick!" His loss of Maria isn't the only thing that is wrong; it makes it clear to him what is wrong everywhere--with Russia, with society, with poetry. He is furious at old-fashioned love poets (it's such poets he's shouting at when the poem begins). They, he says, don't know what love is. They don't know what poetry is, either. Poetry is painful, tough, and modern. It isn't pretty and elegant and sweetly flowing. It's about hospitals, streetcars, and hotels, not about nightingales and roses. His poem, he feels, has the real truth in it--it is huge and crazy and tough and enraged.

_____Probably everyone has, at one time or another, had feelings that were terribly powerful, that seemed too big to be borne, too strong to be kept inside--feelings of love, of lonliness, of anger, of terror. In regular life we learn to control our emotions, to "contain" ourselves, to be reasonable and quiet and objective. Strong emotions can be good for poetry, though. Emotion can put music into language. And losing control, in poetry, can be good for inspiration.

~ excerpted from Sleeping on the Wing

Vladimir Mayakowsky: Exercise

Try writing a poem of rage or protest. It could be about something that you are, in fact, really furious about--a fight with a friend, for instance, or some way you have been treated that is wrong or unfair. Or you can exaggerate or invent feelings about some rather ordinary injustices--that you have to do what other people say, that the weather is horrible, that you are a certain age or live in a certain place. Let yourself go, as Mayakowsky does. Don't try to be modest and fair and objective. Be wild and crazy and boastful. Exaggerate everything. Assume that what happened to you is the worst possible disaster, as important as anything that could happen to cities, countries, mountains, or the ocean. Try comparing your feelings or parts of your body (your heart, your brain, your eyes) to parts of a collapsing, beseiged, or disease-ridden city. Make your poem full of streets, hotels, subways, factories, bridges, airports, smokestacks, and electricity. You might like to make an emergency phone call in the middle of the poem--to your mother, to a friend. Talk from the midst of what you are feeling as if it were all still happening. Be unreasonable, if you want to, bringing in whatever injustices or feelings that, for the moment, seem related. Use tough words--not obscenity, but the kind Mayakowsky uses: words like amputee, swindlers, reeking. Use short lines, or some short ones and some long ones. The poem can change around a lot--maybe sometimes it will be loud like a scream, sometimes quiet like a whisper.

~ excerpted from Sleeping on the Wing

Rain For A Joshua Tree

Like some antiquated x-ray machine spews
roentengens into my flesh you say it's normal
to feel this way. Normal for the earth
to shake and collapse upon itself.

A new fold in the calloused crust irritated
by man's constant picking. Layer upon layer
of rawhide dried by the dessicating desert
moans over sifted sand. Mourning brings tears
to dew the Joshua tree but not enough to drink.

Two months before my insides began to rattle
against my rib cage you said that it was good,
ok, perfection but then later as I fell apart
remarked that I was to see the Master
of my fate immediately.

My ragged heart clutched at my throat
I knew no denial would slow the insidious
scalpel from slicing away my life
again.

No tormentor's torture would feel so naked,
a brand pressed to my skin--
its stink reminds ashes to ashes
and chances shake my roots
grown shallow in youth. I never thirsted
as the desert pine, the well was mine
until siphoned dry with your sucking
lips that deny how ill I feel.

I'll turn my back on your wily prattle; you--
worried more about what they will think
of you than for my erratic heart; to find
solace in the eternity of Earth.

thanks dear.. my favorite russian poet.. the dejected most one.. though he talked of rage and modernism in his own sense, i guess, the milieu didn't allow him to be the 'modern' poet that he thought he was.. but, that makes him more glorious to me.. he and pushkin have remarkable differences and yet, somehow similar....


american poet Mark Strand's poems, to me, resemble sometimes, in form and manner, this great russian poet..

The more I see of this Sleeping on the Wing volume, the more I like their choice of poets but dislike what they are doing to them and saying about them.

Mayakovsky was a Russian poet. I have never before seen his name given this Polish twist of being spelled "Mayakowski" — and then inconsistently having his first name spelled "Vladimir"!

He is a great Soviet-era poet: his name is either Mayakovsky or Mayakovski.

Eluard said:

He is a great Soviet-era poet: his name is either Mayakovsky or Mayakovski.

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I have an anthology featuring some of his poems. There he's spelled Mayakovskij.

Eluard said:

The more I see of this Sleeping on the Wing volume, the more I like their choice of poets but dislike what they are doing to them and saying about them.

Mayakovsky was a Russian poet. I have never before seen his name given this Polish twist of being spelled "Mayakowski" — and then inconsistently having his first name spelled "Vladimir"!

He is a great Soviet-era poet: his name is either Mayakovsky or Mayakovski.

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I saw a translation of part of A Cloud in Trousers that I preferred to the one in this book, but I'm staying faithful to Koch and Farrell for consistency's sake. And I saw three different spellings of his name when I was searching him this morning. I think this book is intended to introduce the poets only enough to talk about the characteristics of their writing and outline a basic exercise for each. There's really very little biographical information in there on any of the poets. Fine by me. I can search and find more info if I want.

Requiem for a World

For Mayakovsky


I will shout a city that will stand against your world
Shout its fine gnat-like legs on which
It can walk across the horizon. Here it is! Cometh the day!

This city invades your world and destroys it. Why? you ask. You do not need to ask.
You know the truth. My city is sickness — sickness of. And nothing else.
I am sick of young men somewhere in Ibiza, or Cancun, or Florida,
Or some other Spring-break hell-hole
Making devil signs into the camera and sticking their tongues out. I am sick
Of them not knowing that Dutch people don’t come from Denmark, or the name of the girl
They fucked the previous night.
I am sick of women who think that being in the business world makes them the equal
of the scientists and artists and engineers and poets who built a civilization with such humility
And care — and who piss over that civilization with their
Gossip about Angelina and Brad or the size of Colin Farrell’s cock.
I am sick of psyched-out, prescription-medicated asses who pretend that when they
Are nasty cunts that it is just the illness speaking, that they’d
Really be nice people if it weren’t for this pesky psychiatric condition.
Assholes can be bi-polar too, you know!
I am sick of people talking about money.
I am sick of people talking about love as though it were money.
I am sick of people who think that aliens walk amongst us.

Do you hear my city grow? It is a city with no one in it but all of its
Buildings were made of a flesh turned steel and
Designed by Gaudi. Its symmetry is human.

I am sick of gangs roaming the streets listening to hip-hop crap
That is really just bragging set to a back-beat.
I am sick of American Idol and the endless warbling of those
Shakira-Beyonce-Weeping-Annaleah wannbees and the lie that this drivel is
Soul music or in any way related to Soul music.
Inventing soulless-Soul is nothing to be proud of!
I am sick of the fact there is no Art being made in this world any longer
Unless it can be marketed in the Sunday supplements
To people who are looking for something to invest in while they sip their
Mock-achinos in outdoor cafes.
I am sick of people who are always checking their cell-phones.
I am sick of people who are “quite optimistic” about this world
Which really just means that they think that they and theirs are sufficiently ok and
That they have risen above the chaos that is growing everywhere beneath them.
I am sick of movies in which the “hero” is always running
And television shows about investigating the decomposed remains of
Someone murdered. The decomposed remains are watching themselves.
I am sick of the idea of stripper-poles and lap-dances.
I am sick of those who think that God is speaking to them and those who
Think that they can talk to the dead.
I am sick of.

There is no red door, no headless body of a man in a suit. No man at all, in fact.
There is just a bird, and a page from Dante’s Inferno.
That and nothing else. That and this city.

Oh wow ... thus spake an artist

UnderYourSpell said:

Oh wow ... thus spake an artist

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Thank you. Now your turn, poetess.

I note this challenge should finish on the anniversary of Mayakovsky's death: the 14th of April.

UnderYourSpell said:

Oh wow ... thus spake an artist

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Hey-hey, U-Y-S, no need to be so sarcastic.

Regards,

Senna Jawa said:

Hey-hey, U-Y-S, no need to be so sarcastic.

Regards,

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Having seen what you've been posting to the blues and drugs thread I think you should keep your mouth firmly shut.

Senna Jawa said:

Hey-hey, U-Y-S, no need to be so sarcastic.

Regards,

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Is this for real? I don't understand why do you want to upset me for complimenting a friend?

UnderYourSpell said:

Is this for real? I don't understand why do you want to upset me for complimenting a friend?

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Don't worry, sweetie. There's a bit of a cranky front right now.

Senna, one thing UYS is NEVER, is sarcastic.

Did you like the way I phrased that? I worked really hard on it.

I am, by the way, liking this week's challenge WAY too much. I need very little encouragement to write like a drama queen.

bj

Eluard said:

Having seen what you've been posting to the blues and drugs thread I think you should keep your mouth firmly shut.

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You are rude and so phony, phooey!

UnderYourSpell said:

Is this for real? I don't understand why do you want to upset me for complimenting a friend?

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If you are his friend then why are you complementing him for a pathetically stupid text? As a friend you should treat it with a merciful silence, like it never happened.

Senna Jawa said:

If you are his friend then why are you complementing him for a pathetically stupid text? As a friend you should treat it with a merciful silence, like it never happened.

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Senna, leave her out of this. I mean it.

bijou

Senna Jawa said:

You are rude and so phony, phooey!

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LOL What a wordsmith!

Senna Jawa said:

If you are his friend then why are you complementing him for a pathetically stupid text? As a friend you should treat it with a merciful silence, like it never happened.

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Please pay attention to this because it's important: this is what most of us do with your ridiculous efforts ALL the time. That is why you are hearing one resounding silence after another.

But enough of this banter: let's not jack this thread discussing your failings as a human being and as a poet. There are other threads that do that.

Senna Jawa said:

If you are his friend then why are you complementing him for a pathetically stupid text?

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Your subjective opinion is duly noted. As is the disingenuous way you choose to present it.

Eluard said:

Please pay attention to this because it's important: this is what most of us do with your ridiculous efforts ALL the time. That is why you are hearing one resounding silence after another.

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Not that this was much better. Please don't presume what others like. I enjoy Senna's poems.


ETA: Right. Sorry. Back to the challenge. My ramble is half done. but I'll be full of Laphroaig tomorrow night, so you won'rt see anything from me til Thursday.

Liar said:

Not that this was much better. Please don't presume what others like. I enjoy Senna's poems.

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Try paying attention to the words used. I said MOST of us.

That you like his poems is also duly noted.

Eluard said:

Try paying attention to the words used. I said MOST of us.

That you like his poems is also duly noted.

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Ok then. How do you know what most of this board's patrons think of them?

Whateva. It's bed time. Hugs and kisses and all that jazz.

There are answers to these questions, but it is really not worth saying.

Whateva, indeed.