About the Poems - RK
About the Poems
by Rauan Klassnik I was travelling in Italy about a year ago and was imprisoned in a dungeon cell by a woman I looked at twice. "No food or water," was the message through a hunchbacked little guard, "until I have written a dozen poems for her." Each of the poems, he added, must involve a man and a woman and must, like Catullus, partake of the violent and the tender. The first drafts of the poems were all rejected. The second and third, etc. I was starving and revised frantically. I was in a fury. No need to turn to Catullus for inspiration of bitter violence. Finally, as my anger grew and the poems darkened even further the woman of the house came down and touched me on the cheek. I returned to the poems in a glow. The next draft of the poems all incorporated a certain slant of love. Of tenderness. (sigh)