The Hotel Where Esenin Hanged Himself
by Bill Yarrow
I walk by the hotel where Esenin hanged himself.
They remodeled it so foreigners wouldn't have access
to his despair. He first tried slashing his wrists.
That didn't work. Blood flew everywhere: counters,
chairs, sheets. He sopped it up with his hands,
wrote eight red lines on the walls. Then he smashed
the mirrors. This was in 1925. He was thirty years old.
Dawn in St. Petersburg looks a lot like midnight.
It's four years later. Mayakovsky has been writing
poems to counter Esenin's, “to make Esenin's end
uninteresting.” Of course, he fails. Then he looks
square at the world and decides it's not for him either;
leaves a note: “Against the everyday has crashed
of love my boat,” pulls a pistol and shoots himself.
The bullet ricochets off the ceiling and breaks his heart.
When writers look in mirrors, they stare at ghosts.
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Author's Note
"to set forth, in place of the easy beauty of death, another kind of beauty"
—Vladimir Mayakovsky
A poem set in Saint Petersburg, but different kind of Church on Spilled Blood.
This poem appeared in Connotation Press.
Thank you, Joani Reese.
This poem appears in Pointed Sentences (BlazeVOX, 2012).
This poem appears in Aeolian Harp, Volume One (Glass Lyre Press 2016).
http://www.amazon.com/Aeolian-Harp-Anthology-Volume-1/dp/1941783163
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nice.
terrifying, chills, amazement
Yep. What Meg said.
Good poem, Bill.
Love this one, as you know...*
Fave, So good, Bill.
Frightening . . . that look in the mirror. *
*
So we go in this truth and never come out of the woods.
One of your trademarks, Bill, is a strong voice. Lots of assurance in the words on the page – poem to poem to poem. Very vocal. Yes. This certainly applies to this work.
"Of course, he fails. Then he looks
square at the world and decides it's not for him either;"
All the pistons are firing in this poem. I'm applauding.
Russian meloncholy to the Nth degree. These guys took everything very seriously. Powerful piece - I'm right there with the strong voice, clear language and perfect structure. Very well done indeed. *
Just read this last night in your super tome, and now can adorn it with a star here. Peace *
I ain't no writer. I don't see no ghosts in the mirror. Not all the time. But I dig your poetics.*
Exceptional, always, Bill!!! LOVE! *****
Bill Bill Bill. You done did it again. whew!
*
"When writers look in mirrors, they stare at ghosts."
Great writing that wants engagement and gets it.
Fantastic, Bill. Made my hair stand on end when I read this at CP and again in your Pointed Sentences.
Fave.
More Bill Yarrow genius. *
stay away from those mirrors.
chilling
What a coincidence: I've just written something prompted by a photo of the dead Yesenin. This poem is beautiful and vast as the Russian soul and the Russian land and literature. You've stared down some ghosts here, I'd say.
Vladimir Mayakovsky
Tr. L. Shmailo
It's after one. You've likely gone to sleep.
The Milky Way streams silver, an Oka through the night.
I don't hurry, I don't need to wake you
Or bother you with lightning telegrams.
Like they say, the incident is closed.
Love's little boat has crashed on daily life.
We're even, you and I. No need to account
For mutual sorrows, mutual pains and wrongs.
Look: How quiet the world is.
Night cloaks the sky with the tribute of the stars.
At times like these, you can rise, stand, and speak
To history, eternity, and all creation.
*** Bill - Larissa
beautiful and powerful*
The last line is phenomenal (but wouldn't be near as good without the preceding). *
I'd be afraid to write about this for fear I'd contract Esenin's disease myself.
*
Good poem. Like the last line.
yes
*
Amazing *
A great poem. I am attaching a book recommendation for those who loved the dynamic violent political reckless energy of Bill's poem. Further reading about Mayakovsky:
NIGHT WRAPS THE SKY
Michael Almereyda editor, Vladimir Mayakovsky works
Farrar, Straus and Giroux,
Apr 7, 2008 - 272 pages
From the time his first, futurist poems were published in 1912 until his suicide at the age of thirty-six, Vladimir Mayakovsky made theatrical appearances in his written work and perfected an iconoclastic voice James Schuyler called “the intimate yell.” As the poet laureate of the Russian Revolution, Mayakovsky led a generation that staked everything on the notion that an artist could fuse a public and a private self. But by the time of Stalin’s terror, the contradictions of the revolution caught up with him, and he ended in despair.
A major influence on American poets of the twentieth century, Mayakovsky’s work remains fascinating and urgent. Very few English translations have come close to capturing his lyric intensity, and a comprehensive volume of his writings has not been published in the past thirty years. In Night Wraps the Sky, the acclaimed filmmaker Michael Almereyda (Hamlet, William Eggleston in the Real World) presents Mayakovsky’s key poems—translated by a new generation of Russian-American poets—alongside memoirs, artistic appreciations, and eyewitness accounts, written and pictorial, to create a full-length portrait of the man and the mythic era he came to embody.
So visceral. I dig it.
Years later, I unearthed her lie. In my father’s obit I found at his mother Margie’s. “Asphyxiation …belt nailed to door jamb in the bedroom of his mother’s house.” I flew home and confronted Mama.
“Maud Ellen, why did you tell me that Daddy killed himself with a gun?”
“I thought it seemed less gruesome,” she replied.
Familiar territory. Well done. The cover up. Always the cover up, the bending, turning and twisting of what is inexorably awful.