Rhyme 3

Desbladet has come up with a Newspaper sonnet, hyphenatedly rhymed. Russian poets have used ‘hyphenated’ rhymes, too, first in jest, later, occasionally, in ostensibly serious verse.

LanguageHat reprints another lesser-known poem by E.D.; a discussion ensues; I ask a loaded question that has to do more with form than content, only to link to a Russian poem I rather enjoy. He who wrote the poem, a major 20th century Russian author, gets mentioned in the West more in connection to his lifestyle than his work.

Which leads us to… All right, “Russian poetry” says little to the general public, and a bit more to Slavists, but sterotypes have emerged even within this obscure domain. Ask an educated, but not letters-centered Russian, or a Russia-aware Anglophone intellectual to name a few Russian poets of the last century, and you’ll very likely to get the same list of four, or a subset of the four. (A Latin American intellectual would give a different list.)

To check my conjecture, I’m asking my readers to do the same without, however, doing any preliminary research.

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