A statue of seminal Russian poet Alexander Pushkin accompanied by some very handsome bird

Have you ever pondered contemporary Russian poetry, framed by the overarching authority of the Soviet government? Bwog hadn’t, but we sent Daily Editor Betsy Ladyzhets to a literary evening with Lev Oborin anyway to discuss Russian poetry over fancy cheeses and wine.

Russia is, in many ways, a nation characterized by powerful leaders. From the Czars to the Soviets, men with strong ideals have governed the country and controlled the modes of expression that its artists could use. In the twentieth century in particular, the Communist Party strictly forbid writers from supporting any opinions outside of the Party Line. But the poets of that era still wrote, as poets tend to do – and their writing became an important way of expressing themselves and fighting their censorship that carried through to the twenty-first century, even after the fall of the Soviet Union.

The Literary Evening with Russian poet Lev Oborin hosted by the Harriman Institute yesterday evening attempted to describe some of the poetry that resulted from this phenomenon. A group of approximately twenty people, most of them fluent Russian speakers and none of them undergraduates, gathered in a conference room on the twelfth floor of the International Affairs building. Refreshments were served: fancy crackers and an exquisite cheese-and-fruit platter, accompanied by an array of red and white wine.

Lev Oborin is a contemporary Russian poet, critic, and translator. He’s published two poetry collections, as well as critical essays in leading Moscow journals, and was shortlisted for the Debut Prize twice. Yesterday, he sat at the head of a conference table and spoke quietly and eloquently, albeit with a heavy Russian accent. (If it weren’t for two audience members not fluent in Russian, one of them this reporter, the talk would have been conducted in Russian.)

The event was split into two sections: a talk and a poetry reading. The talk primarily consisted of Mr. Oborin giving a short history of contemporary Russian poetry, from the 1960s onward. He discussed different ways of mapping poets, grouping them based on school of thought and writing style. Mr. Oberin said that, while other critics like to talk about contemporary Russian poetry as a map or a tree of related groups, he prefers to think about it as a Big Bang – one major event set off inspiration enough to drive contemporary poets for years. “The universe is constantly expanding, and the same is true of poetry,” he said. He was unclear as to what exactly the initial major “bang” event was, but I guessed that it was not a singular event but the oppression of the Soviet Union as a whole.

In the 1960s, 70s, and even into the 80s, government censorship was so prevalent that poetry either had to be Soviet or it had to be underground. Mr. Oberin described different methods that the poets used to cope with their restricted expression. One popular style was turning Soviet propaganda on its head, by using old political slogans and reversing them in some way. As Mr. Oberin explained it: “The political language of the Soviet Union was great material to work with.” Of course, the Russian poets could only stay very angry with and mostly unpublished in their own country for so long. Eventually, something in society had to change – the Soviet Union had to fall. Mr. Oberin joked that, perhaps, a dearth of poetry was responsible for that downfall: “Everything is sad, everything is mocked, and then the Soviet Union collapses – maybe there is some correlation.”

Mr. Oberlin interspersed his discussion of contemporary poets with readings of various poems to demonstrate the styles he mentioned. I didn’t recognize any of those poems, nor did I recognize the vast majority of people he name-dropped – but I was the only audience member with that problem. In fact, several people in the audience asked questions after Mr. Oberin finished speaking, suggesting even more poets to place into his categorical map.

After the discussion, Mr. Oberin read some of his own poetry: some from his older collection, some from his newer, and a couple of more recent poems. He didn’t stand up and pace the room, or make any elaborate gestures. Instead, he simply read, his voice not much louder than it had been when he talked earlier. Of the poetry readings I’ve been to at Columbia so far, this was, by far, the least visibly emotional. (Although I barely recognized ten words from all the poems he read, so perhaps I’m not a good judge.)

Listening to poetry in a language unfamiliar to you is, I think, always a surreal experience – a bit like listening to foreign music, but rawer, more visceral, because there’s no background music to ease you into the unfamiliarity. You hear these phrases, these words, these sounds, and you have no idea what they could possibly mean. Diction, imagery, figurative language – all of these devices poets rely so heavily upon are completely lost to you. But still, somehow, your ear knows that this is poetry. There’s something about the rise and fall of consonants and vowels tells you that this could only be poetry.

And Russian poetry in particular is so driven by rhythm, by sound. Russian is a language with ten vowels and twenty-three consonants, and all of them need to work together to form something beautiful. It’s very different from English – the letters are different, the shapes your mouth makes as you speak them are different – but it’s still a language used to express meaning. Poetry is a form of writing used to express meaning, and that doesn’t change, whether you write in Russian or English, about Putin’s oppression or police brutality.

At the beginning of the event, one of the audience members asked why everyone was so quiet. Another man suggested jokingly that we were “awed by the presence of poetry.” But I think we were all really awed, whether we fully understood the poetry or not.

The regal Pushkin via Shutterstock