[AA] Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) was a Russian poet who livedduring the Soviet era and was victim to Stalinist persecution including censorship, and punishment of her husband and son. She is also a character in Marc Satterwhite’s opera, Akhmatova, whose libretto is by [DM]. Her great poem, Поэма без героя (Poem Without a Hero), first struck in 1942, but her work on its variants and additions carried forward lurchingly almost to her death.

[DM] Don Mager (b.1942) is an American Cold War and post-Cold War era poet and translator, who wrote the libretto to the opera Akhmatova, and translated all five variants of Poem Without a Hero by [AA]—a book length manuscript he is still in the process of annotating and supplementing. Between 1991-1992, Mager translated everything associated with the title Anfänge und Fragmente aus dem Umkreis der Elegien (Beginnings and Fragments From the Thematic Material of The Duino Elegies) by [RMR]. Although some pieces have been published in journals, the entire book length manuscript has not. However lurchingly, has [DM]’s great poem yet struck?

[His Editor] [DM] imagines he has an editor, who late in the cycle starts to voice opinions and despite that he’s ephemeral seems to own the last word.

[RMR] Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) was a German poet whose major work appeared during the first two decades of the 20th century. His great poem, Duino Elegies, first struck in 1912 but with two finished elegies, waited over a decade, during which WWI intervened, before the poet was able lurchingly to complete the other eight. 

Outrage at the rash and precipitous war in Iraq foisted on America by President George W. Bush serves as a broad backdrop.  Positioned at the early years of the 21^st century, the odes look back at the 20^th century and its atrocities.  Poets’ anxiety of audience, however, is the book’s central theme—more broadly, the human anxiety over communication.  Are we ever heard?  Are we understood?   

Contents

Number One Ode to Mothers 6

Number Two Ode to Being in Language 10

Number Three Ode to Osip Mandelstam 14

Number Four The Gigolo Ode 19

Number Five Ode to Jokes 23

Number Six Ode to Crypts 28

Number Seven Ode to Nadezda Mandelstam 32

Number Eight Ode to Stalin’s Daughter 36

Number Nine Ode Against Irony 40

Number Ten Ode On The Iraq War 44

Number Eleven Ode to Boris Pasternak 48

Number Twelve Ode to Trees 52

Number Thirteen Ode to Youth 57

Number Fourteen Ode to Angels 61

Number Fifteen Ode to Prophets 65

Number Sixteen Ode to Fame 71

Number Seventeen Ode to Choice 77

Number Eighteen Ode to Power 81

Number Nineteen The Gray Ode 85

Number Twenty Ode to Despair 89

Number Twenty-One Ode to Alexander Blok 96

Number Twenty-Two Ode to Spring 101

Number Twenty-Three Ode to Translations 107

Number Twenty-Four Ode to Rhymes 113

Number Twenty-Five Ode to the Movie 117

Number Twenty-Six: The Leukemia Ode 123

Number Twenty-Seven: Ode to Beginnings 129

Number Twenty-Eight The Presidential Campaign Ode 134

Number Twenty-Nine Ode to Hiatuses 141

Number Thirty The Reply Ode 145

Number Thirty-One Ode to the Myriad Dead 149

Number Thirty-Two Symphony Ode 154

Number Thirty-Three The ―But‖ Ode 160

Number Thirty-Four The Cold Ode 165

Number Thirty-Five Ode to Heroes 169

Number Thirty-Six The Homeless Ode 175

Number Thirty-Seven The Crowning Ode 177

Number Thirty-Eight Prague in March 184

Number Thirty-Nine Khersones In April 190

Number Forty: Worpswede In April 195

Number Forty-One Tsarskoe Selo in May 200

Number Forty-Two Paris in May 205

Number Forty-Three Paris in June 210

Number Forty-Four Duino in July 215

Number Forty-Five Petrograd in July 220

Number Forty-Six Munich in August 226

Number Forty-Seven Tashkent in August 231

Number Forty-Eight Muzot in August 236

Number Forty-Nine Komarova in August 242

Number Fifty Charlotte in September 247

Afterword Why Form? 253