Osip Emilevich Mandelstam [or Mandelshtam]

The Russian poet Mandelstam was a leader of the Acmeist school. He wrote impersonal, fatalistic, meticulously constructed poems, the best of which are collected in Kamen [Stone] (1913) and

Summer Solstice

by Osip Emilevich Mandelstam [or Mandelshtam] (1892–1938)

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20

Orioles live in the elms, and in classical verse

the length of the vowels alone determines the measure.

Once and once only a year nature knows quantity

stretched to the limit, as in Homer's meter.

O this is a day that yawns like a caesura:

serene from the start, almost painfully slowed.

Oxen browse in the field, and a golden languor

keeps me from drawing a rich, whole note from my reed.

Click here for complete poem

Poets Book of Days

June 20

Anna Laetitia Barbauld born, 1743

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Poetry Trivia

Question:

What poet's death by disease, aboard a troopship in 1915, prompted Winston Churchill to write, "The thoughts to which he gave expression . . . will be shared by many thousands of young men moving resolutely and blithely forward into this, the hardest, the cruelest, and the least-rewarded of all the wars that men have fought"?

Answer

Rupert Brooke

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