M5 Project 2 – Inspiration – Poetry – Boris Ryzhy

I was scrolling through TikTok the other day and this video was suggested to me on my for you page – https://www.tiktok.com/@olgasaidyouaintshit/video/6825195833655446790 . As as a fan of New-wave, post-punk, pop-synth I really enjoyed the song судно (борис рыжий) by молчат дома I found the English lyrics which are really haunting. The TikToker explained that the lyrics were heavily inspired/taken from Russian Poet Boris Ryzhy who committed suicide at the age of 26 in 2001. The TikToker also made a follow up video where she put fourth her translation https://www.tiktok.com/@olgasaidyouaintshit/video/6825260244281675014 which is a lot more poetic.

There is a Boris Ryzhy site which contains a few of his poems in English a lot of the poems I can read concern themselves with death, war, depression, loneliness and love lost, however he explores these topics very gracefully and beautifully. I really admire his fluid use of time in “Best Take The Tram” he takes his reader through different memories which start very solid but then end in a way that leaves you disintegrated into a crowd or familiar place. I also admire his use of memories and self reflection in “How The Granite Is Covered In Ice“. In his poems “Tell Me Right After Snowfall” and “Black Angel On White Snow” there is a really graceful approach to loneliness and feeling connected but also disconnected to others. “About What Do The Grey-haired Stones Remain Silent?” is a really beautiful discussion on poetry as an art form and means of communication. Through looking at his poems I would really like to emulate this sense of fluidity with structure wavering between time, place, reality and memory. I would also like to aim towards a more graceful writing style however I’m not sure how to develop that or at what level I’m currently at, it might possibly be a time/practised based goal, I’ll look into poetry writing guides/courses.

Some Favourite Lines For Inspiration and Why

Best Take The Tram
“You play along to them on your whistle
and then float off to the beautiful sound,
leather jacket, hands in your pockets,
along that path of unending separation,

along that road of unending sadness
to the house where you were born, melting into sunset
solitude, sleep, the moulting of leaves,
come back as a dead soldier.”

Love – bridging lines mirroring. Use of words: float, melting. Sense of sound, atmosphere, place. Harsh ending.

Tell Me Right After Snowfall
“Tell me right after snowfall —
Are we alive or have we been buried?
No, be silent for a while, I need not only words
on earth, in heaven, or in the grave.

The Lord did not grant me a roseate sea,
nor strength to get even with my enemies,
but the ability to weep from another’s sorrow,
loving, to smile at another’s happiness….”

Love – melting from a conversation with someone to a conversation with the self. Use of words: buried, silent, weep.

Black Angel On White Snow
“In the bleak park no one is about.
In the bleak park there is always silence,
and a pine tree — like a stranger — stands.”

Love – lines mirroring and personification of the pine tree.

How The Granite Is Covered In Ice
“This town, frosted with memories,
I want to leave it for ever.
There’ll be warm station beer,
there’ll be a cloud overhead,
there’ll be melancholy music –
I’m saying farewell for good.
More than sky, warmth, humanity,
more than dark sorrow, the poet.
Pointless discussing the eternal,
or anything that simply isn’t.
….
The memory-heap: all different, different,
as the one who is dead once foretold,
what doesn’t fit in is beautiful,
what can’t find a place in the soul.
Too much of everything can’t find a place.”

Love – lines mirroring, repetition and double meaning. Strong sens of place and atmosphere. Use of words: leave, cloud, warmth, humanity, eternal, different, can’t, place.

About What Do The Grey-haired Stones Remain Silent?
“About what do the grey-haired stones remain silent?
For what reason are they deaf to the silence
of the earth? Their gravity is so close to me.
And as far as verse:
in verse silence is all the more important —
whether the rhymes are true or not.
What is a word? Only the expectation
of eloquent quietness.
Verse differs from prose
not only in being orphaned and diminutive.
Early in the morning with the palm of my warm hand
I dried tears from the stone”

Love – personification and metaphor of Stone. Emphasis on silence. The poem takes on a beautiful shape. Use of words: deaf, gravity, silence, expectation, quietness, orphaned, warm, tears.