Dr. Dzho-Anna Poppadomova is sending her festive regards through luuuuuv, of course!
Our quest for the literary truth continues. This time we are dead serious. We are tackling an offspring of Russian Poetry, called poetry composed by the R.A.N.RUS. species*
Who says Akhmatova, Mandelshtam and Tsvetaeva are dead? How can anyone spinning in their graves be dead! We would so much LOVE to provide links to the most atrocious poetry à la Russe! But we know the tortured artists who created these works and we can't afford to buy any new china at the moment ( however, Pushkin's complete works bought from a real Russian kiosk will be yours if you locate them) Write to us privately if you want to see for yourself what Akhmatova's greatest living fans have produced.
As we cannot reproduce the originals here, we have commissioned Dr. Dzho - Anna Poppadomova, Poet Laureate to Tsar Vladimir Putin and his Court, who has written some artist's impressions of the original works. Madam Poppadomova is available as an after-dinner speaker at parties or to write a poem especially for you:
Russian poetry - the asphalt age (or, as the poetess herself humbly calls it, La Poésie Russe des siècles) by Dr. Poppadomova's miraculous pen.
*the Russian Academia of Non Russians - see below. I don't know where they live at the moment, but traces of their civilization have been located in Northern Europe and, more recently, in the States. The South of Europe has been spared as it has not been excavated yet. Or maybe it has but nobody recognised the artifacts for what they really were, as is customary in those parts, and they used them for fillo pastry in a spinach pie.
A fly sat on the large board on which visual aids are written* of the great hall of terror, actually a tiny seminar room with dirty desks and stuffy air, of the Russian department of the University of N. in the town of N**. She does this every now and then: flies through the open window of the basement toilets, flies upstairs, then flies into whichever lecture room the (in)famous Dr. Vera Petrovna is about to pour her liquefied brain into (40% beer, 60% water and 23.5% brain matter... Is there something wrong with this sum? I got the breakdown from her official file!). These are the observations of the esteemed Dr. Ivanna I-Smith, who occasionally disguises herself as the proverbial fly, only to mingle unobserved with a particular insect species: the Russian-Academia-of-non-Russians (R.A.N.RUS).
In real life, she's more of a Barfly, feeding on Tanqueray gin martinis (straight up, two olives) and the grubby underbelly of academia's underworld. She is really very exciting, and talented and accepts fan mail in the form of cheques, cash and bank transfers in any hard currency.
Our scholar will also enlighten us as to how and under what the Library of the above Russian Department would classify this type of literature.
* We wanted to write 'blackboard' but this is politically incorrect (politicians think it is derogatory to People of Color). So is 'whiteboard' (politicians think it is derogatory to People of Color). So we were forced to use this convoluted term which completely destroys the flowing nature of our flawless prose. Sorry.
** It is a great tradition of Russian literature to set one's novel or play
in the town of N. in order to disguise whichever fleapit roach-filled mud hole
of a Russian town one's novel or play is really set in. We are following a literary
tradition, ergo this is literature!