Young Poet Research Articles

Ivan Bunin’s Early Lyrical Poetry: Sources and Influences

This article traces the connection between Ivan Bunin’s early poetry and the Russian poetic tradition of the 19th century. Considering this topic has become particularly relevant at a time when the first critical edition of Bunin’s complete works and letters is under preparation at the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The purpose of the present article is to trace the general direction and pattern of influence on the young poet of the Russian classical tradition (Pushkin, Lermontov, Fet, Tiutchev, Koltsov, Nadson, Pleshcheev, Yakov Polonsky, Apollon Maikov, Apollon Grigorjev, Baratynsky, Nekrasov, K.R. and others) and to relate them to Bunin’s views on poetry as they formed in the 1880s–1890s. The goal of future investigations will be to annotate the critical edition with concrete examples of this influence, not only by the widely-recognized and retrospectively canonized classics, but also by the popular poetry in magazines of the mid-late 19th century, which formed an organic part of the young Bunin’s reading and literary education.

Bolesław Leśmian in Italy: Milo De Angelis and his heavenly journey

The artistic creativity of Bolesław Leśmian – remarkably colourful, musical, and philosophically versatile – has endeared him to readers worldwide over the course of a century. In spite of many socio-political barriers, Leśmian’s poetry become a point of reference, as was the case in Italy in the 1970s. At this time a fi rst encounter with the works of the Polish artist became a crucial moment for a young poet – Milo De Angelis. After a stay in Warsaw, De Angelis founded a literary magazine called “Niebo”, number 11 of which was entirely dedicated to Leśmian, whose visions profoundly infl uenced the poetics of the Italian author, even in later years.

Poetry, Rock ’n’ Roll, and Cinema in Turkey’s 1960s

Abstract Using developments in poetry, music, and cinema as case studies, this article examines the relationship between left-wing politics and cultural production during the long 1960s in Turkey. Intellectual and artistic pursuits flourished alongside trade unionism, student activism, peasant organizing, guerrilla movements. This article explores the convergences between militants and artists, arguing for the centrality of culture in the social movements of the period. It focuses on three revealing debates: between the modernist İkinci Yeni poets and young socialist poets, between left-wing protest rockers and supporters of folk music, and between proponents of radical art film and those of cinematic “social realism”.

Диалог культур в ранней лирике удмуртского поэта Флора Васильева

The article is devoted to the analysis of lyrics by Flor Vasiliev (1934–1978) which is a new page in the history of Udmurt Soviet poetry. The young poet went beyond the generally accepted standards thanks to the rich literary context. This article is devoted to the study of the early lyrics of Flor Vasilyev in the aspect of the dialogue of cultures. The subject of analysis is poems written in the early 1960s. The purpose of the study is to identify and describe literary contacts with representatives of different cultures. The method of analysis is comparative studies. The result of the study is as follow: Flor Vasiliev introduces the names Remarque, Picasso, Grieg, Rembrandt into his poems to depict the general cultural atmosphere of Russia in the 1950s – 1960s, the poet follows the tradition of Russian pop lyrics. Interest in impressionism (Renoir and others) helps to hone style when portraying landscapes and the inner world of the hero. Irony begins to play a large role in the poems of early Flor Vasiliev, the poet learns in this direction from Heinrich Heine. Thus, thanks to the dialogue of cultures, there is a transition from «loud» to «quiet lyrics», humanistic traditions raise the poetry of Flor Vasiliev to a new qualitative level.

The Depths of My Africa: Travelogues on the Land of Ancestors by Claude McKay and Langston Hughes

The article is devoted to the image of Africa in the travelogues by poets Claude McKay (A Long Way From Home, 1937) and Langston Hughes (The Big Sea, 1940), the significant figures of Harlem Renaissance; and also compares this image with Africa in the poems of both writers. The image of Africa as the land of ancestors and the foremother of the Negro people was popular among the artists and philosophers of the Harlem Renaissance, but at the same time, it was often idealized. That is why meeting a real Africa becomes, to some extent, a moment of truth for an African-American artist, the reason to take a new look at himself and his values. Biographies of Hughes and McKay reveal why equally motivated, at first glance, writers united by a common dream of a black peoples home, when faced with the real Africa, react to it in exactly the opposite way. The article shows that young cosmopolitan poet Langston Hughes did not find respond to his poetic ideals in real Africa and after that forever divided Africa into real and poetic, while Claude McKay, who kept up the reunification of the Negro people and had traveled around the whole Europe, only in Africa for the first time in his life went native. At the same time, Hughes is significantly influenced by his mixed origins and McKay - by his colonial background. The article contains materials of correspondence, fragments of the travelogues never been translated into Russian before.

POLITICS AND PLAY IN THE LAVS PISONIS

AbstractThis article examines the first-century c.e.Laus Pisonis, an anonymous panegyric for a certain Piso that lays particular emphasis on his skill at lyre-playing, ball games and the board game, the ludus latrunculorum (155–210). Whereas this focus has often been a cause of consternation among critics, this article argues that play is a crucial element of the poem's poetic and political operations. The first section shows that the poem employs images of poetic maturity and of temporality in order to justify a light or ludic topic for an allegedly young poet. The second section identifies a hitherto unobserved telestich (M-O-R-A) in the passage describing the ludus latrunculorum and argues that this letter game defines a positive period of play within the poem. The third section further demonstrates that this letter game is aimed specifically at the patron Piso as he is represented within the poem. That is, the poet parallels Piso's potential to uncover the telestich in the text and his ability to uncover the poet's hidden talent. The concluding fourth section explores the wider impact of this reinterpretation of the Laus Pisonis for the literary history of the Early Principate. It proposes that the poem's playfulness should not be seen as reflecting the progressive disempowerment of the political elite. Rather, the poem is an early case of Roman political discourse encroaching on the value of the trivial and the boundaries of otium. The Laus Pisonis makes play political.

Black Youth Poetry of 2020 and Reimagined Literacies

In response to anti-Black policing in 2020 that led to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, Black children and teens turned to poetry as a means to channel their self-described terror, rage, pain, horror, tiredness, and need for change. Reminiscent of the poetry of the Black Arts Movement and works published in The Black Panther newspaper, these poems, many of which call for a “revolution,” are reflective of young people’s critical engagements with the world and the word. With critical literacy as a framework, I engage in critical discourse analysis to determine how the young poets reimagine literacy as they protest anti-Black policing and racism. By focusing on young people’s own grassroots literacy initiatives, which call for the reimagination of blackness and whiteness, and demand truth, justice, and reimagined futures, I demonstrate how educators can reimagine literacy practices to center students’ criticalities and prioritize racial justice.

La Conversation Transatlantique: Les échanges Franco-Américains en Poésie Depuis 1968

La Conversation Transatlantique: Les échanges Franco-Américains en Poésie Depuis 1968

“My Body Knows Unheard of Songs”

In 1908, shortly after giving birth to her first son, Cécile Sauvage, a young poet from rural south-eastern France, grieves the alteration of physical, emotional, and spiritual intimacy with her newborn son. Sauvage engenders her coming of age as a mother in twenty poems, which together comprise L’Âme en bourgeon (“The Soul in Bud”) forming the latter part of her first 1910 collection Tandis que la terre tourne (“As the Earth Spins”).Through the poetic figuration of her conflicting joys and melancholies with maternal status, Sauvage’s works reflect an oscillation between her embodiment of and detachment from the natural environment. While pregnancy manifests the closest and most fulfilling relationship possible for Sauvage, childbirth signifies a distancing of the relationship with her son, herself, and the natural world. She shifts between embracing and subverting the romanticization of motherhood through natural imagery to de-romanticize the reckoning bound up with the decentering of self intrinsic to motherhood. Her poems serve not only to foreground the subjects of pregnancy, childbirth, and motherhood in an art form that about these experiences, but functions, moreover, to complicate facile notions of maternal agency, eroticism, and death.

Талан-доля юних поетів і поеток Полтавщини (про X Полтавський обласний онлайн-конкурс «Авторська збірка поезій школяра», присвячений 2021 року, оголошеному Роком Лесі Українки з нагоди 150-річчя від дня народження

The problem of literary abilities development in pupils of secondary education institutions’ is revealed by participation in the Poltava regional competition «Author's collection of pupils’ poems». Following Article 53 of the Law of Ukraine «On Education», Article 20 of the Law of Ukraine «On Extracurricular Education»and to develop the literary competence of pupils, their abilities and talents, strengthening individual work with them, meeting their interests, spiritual needs and professional needs the definition of the competition is carried out every two years. During 2002–2021, 279 young poets of Poltava region took part in this event in three age categories: 1–4; 5–9; 10–11 grades. Thus, working on this project, we emphasize that some pupils are eager to develop their literary abilities and have limitless possibilities.

Psalms and Interpretation in Milton's Nativity Ode

Psalms and Interpretation in Milton's Nativity Ode

Art in the Time of Corona: Transforming learning for 4.7 million children

While performing at the TEDxGatewaySalon Platform1 in 2019, Muskan, a young poet involved with Slam Out Loud (SOL), shared how she was often told by her parents and teachers that “the arts are for ...

Mourning the Bards: Interrogating the Contemporaneity of John Milton’s Lycidas and Pius Adebola Adesanmi.

This paper examines John Milton’s ‘Lycidas’ in line with the traditional conventions for analyzing pastoral elegies which include the invocation of the muses, the presence of nature in the mourning process, the charging of the guardian spirits by the mourners of negligence, the mourning procession, the questions of justice, elaborate passage and the final consolation. The paper further interrogates the African concept of death and the mourning of the dead. It further discusses the semiotic codes of death and mourning in Africa. It also critically examines the contemporaneity ‘Lycidas’ and its place in the contemporary society by juxtaposing the mourning of the death of King Edward and Prof. Pius Adebola Adesanmi. The paper, which is dedicated to the sad memory of late Prof. Pius Adesanmi, quarries the similarities and the coincidences between the death and the mourning of King Edward and Prof. Pius Adesanmi who were both young and dynamic poets and scholars but who died prematurely while travelling. The paper shows that their death symbolizes the universality and the inevitability of death.

The poetics of hope and frustration: young Egyptian poets interrogating the nation

Never has the timeless distrust of different generations been more manifest than these days where we see the Egyptian young revolutionaries who emerged in the wake of 2011 being marginalized and even silenced. The last few years in Egypt have witnessed numerous attempts to analyze and interrogate contemporary discourses within different forms of popular culture situating them as fundamental means of examining power and agency. Such contemporary discourses of power, hegemony, revolution, opposition besides concepts of nationalism and resistance in the wake of 2011 revolution and its aftermath, have been the subject of a number of studies on the literary output of the revolution, and notably in the field of poetry and songs. Most of these studies viewed the colloquial poetry produced by young Egyptian poets within the continuum of this rich poetic tradition. I argue that recent poems by young Egyptian poets represent a rupture rather than a continuity within this same tradition. The selected poetic voices are distinguished from both the Egyptian long established tradition of vernacular poetry but also from the poetry composed and sung in the early days of the revolution. This new generation of poets sing the pain and frustration of a dream that did not come true. As they interrogate the meaning of nationalism and the nation itself, one of the main themes in Egyptian vernacular lyrical and poetic tradition, a new corpus is emerging out of their poetry of resistance almost claiming a history of its own.

How to Become an Author: The Poet Isa Asp and Her Childhood Fascination with Writing for Magazines

In this article the author explores the early development of the identity as a writer of a Finnish-speaking poet Lovisa (or Isa) Asp (1853–1872). She wrote her lyrics in the Finnish language in the 1870s, and she is regarded as the first 19th-century female Finnish poet (whose works were published in Finnish). She began writing poetry (initially in Swedish) as a teenager and started her literary career as a contributor to children’s magazines. Asp began her studies at the Teacher Training College in Jyväskylä in autumn 1871 with the aim of working as an elementary school teacher, but she also dreamt of becoming an established writer someday. Unfortunately, her early death meant that most of her poetry remained unpublished until the 21st century.
 The author investigates what kind of literature Asp read and why she was able to read extensively as a child in the remote Finnish-speaking countryside at a time when Finnish-language literature for children was scarce and still only nascent and being developed for nationalistic reasons; in those decades, most of the books and publications were still written in Swedish. The author analyses in particular the gendered experiences of reading (and writing) in the life of a young girl and woman from the countryside, because in those days most of the authors were men living in towns. A special focus of the article is on the texts that she wrote and edited for children’s magazines. The author studies her autobiographical sources using a biographical method and considers what kind of literature and libraries inspired her career as an early female poet.
 National poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg and poet and historian Zacharias Topelius, the major Fennoman authors, were the literary models for the young Isa Asp. Their works inspired her to write and to aspire for a career as a poet and author, an occupation that was then still rare for a woman. Writing for children’s magazines was a crucial stage in her career, and her identity as a writer was strengthened by the opportunity to have her poems and short tales published. Also, writing for these handwritten as well as published magazines made her dreams visible and encouraged her to pursue them with effort. All this shows that her development as a writer was a deliberate, goal-oriented process. The publication of her poems and obtaining the community’s approval of them were important for the young poet. The encouragement to pursue a career in writing that Isa with her literary gifts received as a child from her immediate surroundings helped her to achieve her dreams, which in the end turned out not to be impossible to realise.

Line Breaks in America: the Odds and Ends of Poetry

I tended to find lines of poetry beautiful only when I encountered them quoted in prose, in the essays my professors had assigned in college, where the line breaks were replaced with slashes, so that what was communicated was less a particular poem than the echo of poetic possibility. (Lerner, 2011 chap.1) Ben Lerner’s narrator, a young poet getting bored in Madrid while on a Fulbright, voices a feeling that may not be unfamiliar to readers of verse, as the success of Lerner’s follow-up essay...

Post-modernist Elements in Javed Ihsas’s Poetic Collection ‘Ayina (The Mirror)’

Javed Ihsas is a prominent contemporary Pashto poet, critic, and columnist. He writes poetry with the new spirit and style of the modern critical theories of literature and philosophy. In his verses, we can observe the elements of Modernism and Post-modernism as well. In this study, we explored the post-modernist elements in his poetry, especially in his Pashto poetic collection titled Ayina. The word 'Ayina' is a Pashto word that means 'The Mirror'. The very title of the collection gives a symbolic representation in the sense that it depicts a realistic picture of society. This study is an attempt to examine the Post-modernist elements in his poetry by using a post-modernist approach. The poet touches on the elements of post-modernism in his poetry such as the element of social construction; the notion that ideas, politics, and language are socially constructed, consumerism, postponement, etc. This study explores the post-modernist elements in Javed Ihsas’ poetry which are will prove a beacon light for the young poets.

Translating Trakl: James McAuley’s Encounter with the Cultural Other

Translation theorist Laurence Venuti has written how a translator, in “a Romantic transcendence” can lose “his national self through a strong identification with a cultural other.” TS Reader, 20) Australian twentieth-century poet James McAuley’s reading and translation of the early twentieth-century Austrian poet Georg Trakl presents a significant literary encounter. Cosmopolitan by nature, McAuley, as a young poet, had been drawn to, and translated, the German language lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926). Few of McAuley’s translations of Trakl are included in his Collected Poems(1971 and 1994); they appear in a separate posthumous collection (1982) and in his essay “The Poetry of Georg Trakl” (1975). This article offers a literary appreciation of McAuley’s translations and his commentary on Trakl’s imagery, prosody, symbolism and world view which McAuley described, borrowing Baudelaire’s term, as “a landscape of the soul.” It considers the hypothesis of translation as travel. Drawing on Harold Bloom’s theory of influence it examines McAuley’s encounter with Trakl in his late work, translations and poetic dedication (“Trakl: Salzburg,” 1976) written after visiting Salzburg in 1973. A comparatist approach traces Trakl’s influence, the discovery of affinities or parallel paths with the earlier poet who might be considered, in Bloomian terms, to be McAuley’s “gnostic double.”

The idea of independence in Kazakh poetry

This article describes the social life, the fate of the nation, the state of the people, which became the basis of poetic works during the years of independence. Since then, humanity has been fighting tirelessly for its freedom, for the independence of its country. The study of whether poetic works influenced the path of development, formation, ascent, and what changes and features brought independence to the work of the Akyns, was part of the spiritual heritage of the modern sovereign state – historical events caused by the thirst for liberation and the social struggle for its achievement. To consider the features of the poetic direction, the topics covered by the poets of the period of independence, to determine the place of the creativity of individual akyns in the history of Kazakh literature. Comprehension of poetic features of poetic works during the years of Independence, determination of the place of creativity of individual poets in the history of Kazakh literature. The purpose of the study: to conduct a comprehensive study of the artistic nature and genre-poetic-textual features of Kazakh poetry over the years of independence. Carry out works that correspond to the nature of development, the main channels of formation and creativity of young poets who came to the world of poetry during the years of independence. The foundations of genre and poetic transformations in Kazakh poetry during the period of independence encode cultural intensification, give poetic creativity an individual meaning, bring together national and related genres in the context of a modern text, emphasize the artistic and aesthetic power of modern language culture

Rachel Conrad, Time for childhoods: Young Poets and Questions of Agency

Review/Recension