Russian clay semaphore

Sources are elusive, not so pin-pointable.  I do know the Burago/Monas translation of Osip Mandelstam's collected poems, published by SUNY Press in the 1970s, was a model for Stubborn style.  Mandelstam was transmorphed into colloquial American - almost too breezy & familiar.  But I knew in the beginning that if I was going to write an "epic" I had to open up, let fly.  The Monas/Burago version gave me a clue.

Which reminds me of another facet.  You may have noticed the emphasis on "clay" and "earth" in these opening salvos.  This of course has something to do with gravity, Orpheus, & going down in order to come back up... but a deeper signal came from Mandelstam's late Voronezh poems, which are suffused with a very tender, empathetic & telepathic transmission of Russian "black earth".

(Locals may notice a reference to the "Waterfire" summer night festivals, which were starting to rev up in downtown Providence in the late '90s.)

from Shakespeare's Head

9

The little town hovered over the partying rivers, 

dangled fishline and docks, the harbor boats. 

Buildings rose and were gnomon routes

for the hobo sun; goldminers, pearldivers

all sent what they had for the jewelry works

and the rings glistened and glowed at the wedding. 

And if you were Hamlet, you'd perch on the pier – sling 

arrows toward the industrial pinnacle – until sparks

catch fire, all over that flagrant ingle.

All over the river, drums boom midsummer.

Bells tingle, feet slide across clay to the tambor 

shakes. . . Unmourned, you're heading for the jungle.

Boat landing near Point St. Bridge, Providence River

Osip Mandelstam