David Shraer-Petrov. Forma liubvi: Izbrannaia lirika.

Terras, Victor

David Shraer-Petrov. Forma liubvi: Izbrannaia lirika. Moscow. IUnost'. 2003. 147 pages. ISBN 5-88653-054-1

THE READER WHO IS TEMPTED by the cover of Porma liubvi will be richly rewarded, but not in the way suggested by the illustration with its conversion of the letters Phi and Lambda, the first letters of the volume's title, into the breasts and pudenda of a luscious nude. The collection of selected poems from six previously published volumes spans fifty years of the author's life. Amazingly, the first poem, dated 1958, which means that it was written when he was twenty-one, already bears out the poet's style. It is entitled "Beloved or Mistress?" (the Russian words Liubimaia and Liubovnitsa are both derived from the same root liub, "love"). At first, the answer to the question is made to depend on the poet: Is he daring or merely lucky (udaloi vs. udachlivyi, with a paronomasia!). Subsequently, the answer shifts to a series of nature images that suggest a transition from one state to another. Dealing with love in the context of nature will remain a characteristic trait of Shraer's output. Behind titles such as "Goldfish" (1958), "Deafmutes" (1959), "Still Life" (1962), "Night Butterflies" (1959), "Tulips" (1969), "The Rains Are Flying Off" (1962), "A Winter Morning" (1971), and "Aquarius" (1977) are hidden subtle observations about the many nuances of love, happy or unhappy. Other titles indicate the kind of love presented in a poem: "Come" (1959), with the punch line: "Kill, die, lie, steal / but come!'; "Give the Girl Flowers" (1955); "Don't Come" (1959); "Admission" (1962); "Separation" (1961); "It's All About You" 1975), etcetera.

Love appears in a great variety of forms, classical hexameter ("A Summernight," 1990), alexandrine ("You Used to Say to Me: I Love You!," 1995), iambic tetrameter ("Nocturne," 1964), and trimeter ("Don't Tell Me, Friend, That You Did Love Her," 1969). Various other regular meters occur, from anapests ("Enough Suffered, My Soul," 1993), trochees ("Summer Romances," 1958-76) to tonic verse ("Let's Dance in the Moonlight," 1995), and simple free verse ("If to Count," 1995).

Still, all this is not enough. In the last decade, David Shraer-Petrov has taken to popular genres, such as the chastushka ("Laughing Girl, Tigress, Love," 1998), the blues ("Blues on the Yellow River in New Orleans," 1991), and rap ("Fortune Telling," 1996). This reviewer worked hard at finding any poems that have nothing to do with love.

Victor Terras

Brown University