bullpenned

ANNA ANDREEVNA AKHMATOVA
FIGHTS ANTONIN ARTAUD
by Eugene Ostashevsky

Akhmatova: AAA! AAA! AAA! AAA! AAA!

Artaud: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Akhmatova: AAA! AA! AAA! AA! AAA!

Artaud: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Akhmatova: AAAAA! AAAAA! AAAAA!

Artaud: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Akhmatova: AA! AA! AA! AA! AA! AA!

Artaud: ?!?!

Akhmatova: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

Artaud: A! A! A! A! A! A! A!

Akhmatova: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!


(Artaud absconds, abdicating.)




*

Eugene Ostashevsky is a Russian-born American poet from New York City. His books include the poetry collection Iterature and a volume of Russian 1930s writings in translation called OBERIU: An Anthology of Russian Absurdism. He currently lives and teaches in Florence.



EDITOR'S NOTE:
"When her father learned that his daughter was about to publish a selection of her poems in a St. Petersburg magazine, he called her in and told her that although he had nothing against her writing poetry, he'd urge her 'not to befoul a good respected name' and to use a pseudonym. The daughter agreed, and this is how 'Anna Akhmatova' entered Russian literature instead of Anna Gorenko. (...) The five open a's of Anna Akhmatova had a hypnotic effect and put this name's carrier firmly at the top of the top of the alphabet of Russian poetry. In a sense, it was her first successful line; memorable in its acoustic inevitability, with its Ahs sponsored less by sentiment than by history."

- from "The Keening Muse" in Less Than One: Selected Essays by Joseph Brodsky