Sebastian Hayes

THE POETRY CAFE   Wednesday 27 Jan 2010

“The Trace they Wished to Leave” :
Fyodor Tyutchev, Anna de Noailles, Manuel Ulacia

John Dewey, whose biography of Tyutchev will shortly be published by Brimstone Press Ltd, jntroduced us to
Fyodor Tyutchev (1803-1873)

He writes “Fyodor Tyutchev is revered by Russians as one of their great lyric poets, sharing that accolade with the likes of Pushkin, Blok, Mandelstam, Akhmatova and others. Outside his native land, however, he remains curiously unknown. He trained as a diplomat and between the ages of eighteen and forty lived abroad, mainly in Munich. On returning to settle in Russia he began a second career as a government censor (by no means an unusual occupation for a Russian writer at that time). His verse combines emotional intensity with philosophical depth, revealing glimpses of an eternal and unfathomable reality behind the fleeting world of appearances. His nature poetry is unsurpassed, as is the remarkable ‘Denisyeva cycle’ charting a tempestuous long-term extramarital relationship.”     John Dewey

Sebastian Hayes, co-Director of Brimstone Press Ltd, introduced us to

Anna de Noailles (1876 – 1933)

He writes: “Anna de Noailles was a well-known poet, novelist and woman of letters during the Belle Epoque but is now almost entirely forgotten. An acclaimed beauty sculpted by Rodin, at least one young man in Paris allegedly committed suicide because of her. As a poet, she is full of fire and unashamed sensuality and saw herself as a female Nietzsche, a thinker she admired and whose philosophy she claimed to espouse. Stylistically, she resisted modern innovations such as ‘free verse’ and stream of consciousness techniques, keeping strictly to traditional verse forms.”

Sarah Lawson, poet and translator of Prévert and Fernández de Moratín,  introduced us to
Manuel Ulacia (1953-2000)

She writes: “Manuel Ulacia was a Mexican academic who specialized in Luis Cernuda and had known him personally. One of his poems, the long and impressive ‘Origami for a Rainy Day’ concerns the memory of meeting the older poet when he (Cernuda) was visiting Manuel’s parents when Manuel was a little boy. All of Ulacia’s poems are very personal. Some of them are about his coming to terms with his homosexuality, his confusion as an adolescent, his search for a soul-mate in later years. There is a very touching poem about the death of his father, and a really extraordinary one about being on an overnight Moroccan express train when a woman comes into his compartment and gives birth!”