Russian Poets Are Not Romantic. Comments

Your bold statement - RUSSIAN POETS ARE NOT ROMANTIC - cannot be seen as a simple matter of what's true and what's false. You are writing from a point of view above literal truth or falsehood. As I read my mind was flooded with images of ROMANTIC RUSSIAN POETS - Akhmatova, Mayakovsky, Yevtushenko, Akhmadulina - but your statement is not about statistics but about essence, not what meets the eye but what reveals the soul. And so I must push aside these other, just earth-bound notions, so that I can see the VISION you created. I cannot sustain such a vision the way you and Joseph can, because part of me stays on earth, echoing Keats's sonnet, THE POETRY OF EARTH IS CEASING NEVER. But in your poem earth does cease (A UNITING FLAME... CONSUMED THE WORLD) and only Christ remains - and His heavenly Kingdom. As Brodsky wrote. MIRACLES, GRAVITATING TO EARTH, KNOW JUST WHERE PEOPLE WILL BE WAITING to ascend.

Where people are romantic then it hardly matters whether poet are or not. A wonderful poem, Liza....Romance is within us not outside, with age things changes and to keep the flames burning one should stretch extra inch...10++