Conclusion
That is probably all. Of course, one could speak about poetry for hours, days, even weeks. One could provide thousands of examples, introduce several hundred additional specialized terms into the text, construct elaborate classifications, and so on. But I shall limit myself to what I have already written. I very much hope that I have written plainly, as I intended, without unnecessary abstruseness. This handbook contains both “official” material—that is, generally accepted principles recognized by literary scholarship, taught at universities, and described in textbooks—and things I have devised myself because they seem to me more correct. In conclusion, I shall provide a list of recommended reading for those who wish finally to feel themselves poets.
Recommended Reading
1. Leonid Kaganov, “Bad Advice for Poets: How Not to Write Poetry”, essay. In it, Kaganov points out many of the mistakes made by young poets in their work—from the way poems are submitted to competitions to thematic clichés. I highly recommend reading it.
2. Shulgovsky, Nikolai. 1926. Entertaining Versification (Занимательное стихосложение). Moscow.
3. Shulgovsky, Nikolai. 1914. Theory and Practice of Poetic Creation: Technical Foundations of Versification (Теорiя и практiка поэтическаго творчества. Техническiе начала стихосложенiя). Moscow: M. Wolf.
4. The rhyme website http://rifmoved.ru. It contains a tremendous amount of useful information about rhyme, its varieties, applications, and so forth.
5. Alexander Kvyatkovsky, Poetic Dictionary. The most complete and serious dictionary of poetic terminology ever published. The full text may be found at http://feb-web.ru/feb/kps/kps-abc. The same site also hosts the excellent two-volume Dictionary of Literary Terms edited by Nikolai Brodsky: http://feb-web.ru/feb/slt/abc. I can recommend it as well.
6. And, of course, poetry. Lots and lots of good poetry. Read all the authors cited as examples in this handbook. You will not regret it!
7. For those interested in combinatorial poetry, I can recommend Tatyana Bonch-Osmolovskaya’s lecture course, available here: http://www.ashtray.ru/main/texts/experlit/expind.htm, as well as her book Introduction to the Literature of Formal Constraints, published in Samara in 2009.
There are also several additional rules.
1. Do not listen to the opinions of your friends and relatives regarding your own works. They will never tell you the truth. They will judge you only with bias. The only person capable of evaluating your творчество objectively is a stranger.
2. Do not write only for the drawer—bring your poetry before the public, take part in festivals and competitions. The drawer is no judge of your work!
3. If you have written a poem, be certain that you have written a bad poem. A miserable and talentless one. If you believe that you have written something truly worthy, you will never write anything better.
Now that really is all. Good luck, Mister Bond!
Bibliography
1. Timofeev, L. I., and S. V. Turaev. 1978. A Concise Dictionary of Literary Terms. Moscow: Prosveshchenie.
2. Kvyatkovsky, Alexander P. 1966. Poetic Dictionary. Edited by Irina Rodnyanskaya. Moscow: Soviet Encyclopedia.
3. Shulgovsky, Nikolai N. 1926. Entertaining Versification. Leningrad: Vremya.
4. Brodsky, Nikolai, Alexander Lavretsky, Eduard Lunin, Vladimir Lvov-Rogachevsky, Mikhail Rozanov, and Vladimir Cheshikhin-Vetrinsky, eds. 1925. Literary Encyclopedia: A Dictionary of Literary Terms. 2 vols. Moscow–Leningrad: L. D. Frenkel Publishing House.
5. Bonch-Osmolovskaya, Tatyana B. 2009. Introduction to the Literature of Formal Constraints. Samara: Bakhrakh-M.
6. Kaganov, Leonid. “How Not to Write Poetry.” http://lleo.me.
7. Rhyme website. http://rifmoved.ru.
The handbook makes use of poems, song lyrics, prose texts, and references by the following authors: Dante Alighieri, Archilochus, Alexander Bal, Dmitry Avaliani, Anna Akhmatova, Bella Akhmadulina, Konstantin Balmont, Matsuo Bashō, Vladimir Benediktov, Andrei Berdnikov, Alexander Blok, Andrei Bolkunov, Joseph Brodsky, Valery Bryusov, Ivan Bunin, Geoffrey Chaucer, Alexei Chicherin, Ivan Chudasov, Korney Chukovsky, Vasily Chuyevsky, Yanka Dyagileva, Kristina Ebauer, Afanasy Fet, Mark Freidkin, Alexander Gabriel, Alexander Galich, Boris Grinberg, Igor Guberman, Nikolai Gumilev, Heinrich Heine, Hipponax, Homer, Horace, Georgy Ivanov, Mikhail Isakovsky, Alexander Karpov, Leonid Kaganov, Antioch Kantemir, Nikolai Karamzin, Ivan Kashkin, Rimma Kazakova, Yevgeny V. Kharitonov, Omar Khayyam, Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Koltsov, Hryhorii Konyskyi, Boris Kornilov, Andrei Kotov, Yakov Kozlovsky, Ivan Krylov, Alexander Kvyatkovsky, Alya Kudryasheva, Mikhail Kuzmin, Mikhail Lermontov, Kirill Levich, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walter Lowenfels, Mikhail Lomonosov, Vladimir Lugovskoy, Yevgeny Lukin, Osip Mandelstam, Jorge Manrique, Anna Markina, Samuil Marshak, Mikhail Matusovsky, Vladimir Mayakovsky, Apollon Maykov, Lev Mei, Oleg Medvedev, Willy Melnikov, Vidadi Molla, Natalya Moiseyeva, Mollanepes, Alexander Morozov, Alisher Navoi, Alexei Nedogonov, Nikolai Nekrasov, Ivan Nikitin, Princess Nukata, Vladimir Onufriyev, Jean Passerat, Viktor Pelevin, Vladimir Pinayev, Edgar Allan Poe, Vera Polozkova, Simeon of Polotsk, Alexander Pushkin, Dmitry Rastaev, Robert Rozhdestvensky, Nikolai Rubtsov, Ivan Rukavishnikov, Shota Rustaveli, Kondraty Ryleyev, Gleb Sedelnikov, Georgy Shengeli, William Shakespeare, Alexander Shcherbina, Mikhail Shcherbakov, Nikolai Shulgovsky, Dana Sideros, Tim Skorenko, Vladimir Smirensky, Fyodor Sologub, Edmund Spenser, Alexander Sumarokov, Mikhail Svetlov, Igor Severyanin, Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy, Marina Tsvetaeva, Fyodor Tyutchev, Pavlo Tychyna, Alexander Tvardovsky, Ivan Turgenev, Joseph Utkin, Alexander Vasilyev, Vladimir Vishnevsky, Igor Vishnyakov, Sergei Volsky, Alexander Vostokov, Vladimir Vysotsky, Walt Whitman, Sergei Yesenin, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Nikolai Zabolotsky, Gennady Zhukov, Vasily Zhukovsky,
The handbook makes use of poems by foreign poets in translations by Konstantin Balmont, Valery Bryusov, Ivan Chudasov, Korney Chukovsky, Anna Gluskina, Ivan Kashkin, Natalya Korovenko, Wilhelm Levik, Mikhail Lozinsky, Vera Markova, Sergei Marshak, Shalva Nutsubidze, Sergei Protasyev, Vladimir Rogov, Osip Rumer, Ilya Selvinsky, Konstantin Simonov, Tatyana Spendiarova, Arseny Tarkovsky, Nikolai Ushakov, Vikenty Veresaev, Yuri Verkhovsky, Mikhail Zenkevich, and Vasily Zhukovsky.