{"id":26734,"date":"2014-09-09T06:30:00","date_gmt":"2014-09-08T18:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/?p=26734"},"modified":"2014-09-08T23:02:44","modified_gmt":"2014-09-08T11:02:44","slug":"the-tuesday-poem-july-1914-by-anna-akhmatova","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/2014\/09\/09\/the-tuesday-poem-july-1914-by-anna-akhmatova\/","title":{"rendered":"The Tuesday Poem: &#8220;July 1914&#8221; by Anna Akhmatova"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>July 1914<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I<\/p>\n<p>All month a smell of burning, of dry peat<br \/>\nsmouldering in the bogs.<br \/>\nEven the birds have stopped singing,<br \/>\nthe aspen does not tremble.<\/p>\n<p>The god of wrath glares in the sky,<br \/>\nthe fields have been parched since Easter.<br \/>\nA one-legged pilgrim stood in the yard<br \/>\nwith his mouth full of prophecies:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBeware of terrible times\u2026 the earth<br \/>\nopening for a crowd of corpses.<br \/>\nExpect famine, earthquakes, plagues,<br \/>\nand heavens darkened by eclipses.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBut our land will not be divided<br \/>\nby the enemy at his pleasure:<br \/>\nthe Mother-of-God will spread<br \/>\na white shroud over these great sorrows.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>an excerpt from <strong>July 1914\u00a0<\/strong> by Anna Akhmatova, 1889-1996<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p>This year being the centenary of the start of WW1, I have been looking at war poetry from the period and also trying to look beyond the UK poets I am most familiar with. One of the more impressive voices has to be Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova&#8212;not least because poems such as &#8220;July 1914&#8221; suggest she had a clear idea of what was coming. I have only posted an excerpt, but I definitely think searching out her poetry will repay your effort.<\/p>\n<p>&#8212;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/TuesPoem.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-7519\" src=\"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/08\/TuesPoem.jpg\" alt=\"TuesPoem\" width=\"120\" height=\"107\" \/><\/a>Meanwhile, you know the drill: to check out the featured poem on the <strong>Tuesday Poem Hub<\/strong> and other great poems from fellow Tuesday poets from around the world, click <a href=\"http:\/\/tuesdaypoem.blogspot.com\/\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>here<\/strong><\/a> or on the <strong>Quill<\/strong> <strong>icon <\/strong>in the sidebar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>July 1914 I All month a smell of burning, of dry peat smouldering in the bogs. Even the birds have stopped singing, the aspen does not tremble. The god of wrath glares in the sky, the fields have been parched since Easter. A one-legged pilgrim stood in the yard with his mouth full of prophecies: [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26734"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26734\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26736,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26734\/revisions\/26736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/helenlowe.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}