Hi and welcome to my Friday series The Hairbag Poet.
In the blogging world Fridays are known as Poetry Friday. You can read about Poetry Friday here. I will plan on posting The Hairbag Poet each Friday.
You can read about the history of this series here.
Russia, Russia, Russia, it’s all we hear about in the news lately, so I thought I would devote this weeks Hairbag Poem to Acmeism. According to the poetry foundation (2018) Acmeism is “An early 20th-century Russian school of poetry that rejected the vagueness and emotionality of Symbolism in favor of Imagist clarity and texture. Two famous poets of Acmeism are Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova. Both these poets lived through the tumultuous Russian Revolution, and the communist leadership of both Lenin and Stalin.
Mandelstam was a poet in a time when artistry, and individual thought did not fit into communist government ideology. During his life, Mandelstam was exiled, arrested and tortured, released, rearrested, and died in the Soviet work camp/prison system. He paid the ultimate price for freedom of speech.
After being a celebrated writer and poet for most of her life, in 1925, under the new Bolshevik government, Anna Akhmatova’s work was banned. The government was in control of all literary publication and funding. Her son was placed in a work camp, his only crime being the son of his father Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilev a poet and counterrevolutionary. Gumilev was executed in 1921 without a trial.
As writers we take our freedoms and liberty seriously. If we have to think twice about what we are writing or saying, are we really free?
I hope you enjoy these posts. Thanks for stopping by and reading, and please feel free to post your own poetry in the comments if you feel inspired by the photographs. I always love reading other peoples perspective on “art”.
The Hairbag Poet
Photo by Donald titled “Snow Cat”
Siberian Snow Cat
Kis, Kis, Kis they call to me…
Bitter cold warms my spirit.
A thousand winters pass.
Kis, Kis,Kis they call to me…
Conifers bow as one
In taigas’ boreal winds.
Kis Kis, Kis they call to me…
Mountain peaks cry frosty streams.
Icy crocheted doilies wet my tongue.
Kis, Kis, Kis they call to me…
Snowy forest playground romps;
Jump, vault, hurdle, dive!
Kis, Kis, Kis they call to me…
Puff, puff, puff; palatial pelage puffs
Warding winter winds.
Kis, Kis, Kis they call to me…
Sable, fox, squirrel, ermine
Treukh, Ushanka, Kubanka, Papakha.
Kis, Kis,Kis they call to me…
Take refuge from the cold,
Abandon ancient grounds.
Kis, Kis,Kis they call to me…
“My turn shall also come:
I sense the spreading of a wing.”
Thank you for reading. The last line is a quote from Osip Mandelstam’s poem “I hate the light” from Selected Poems.
These are the real Siberian Snow Cats.
Nightingalechronicles.com 
I’m learning so much from your Friday posts! You’ve got another good one here. How lucky we are in this country to be free to write without fear of censorship, or worse.
Thanks Carrie. I love poetry, but to be honest, I don’t know that much about it. There are so many poetic terms! Along with having fun, I’m learning right along with you.