Volume I

Upon Reading Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace:’

An Introduction in Brevity ~

Volume I

Upon Reading Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace:’

An Introduction in Brevity ~

1852, diary notations, a historical account of 19^th century Russia fueled the light of Leo Tolstoy, commanding as were his military demise, the Decembrist’s (Tolstoy’s own class), and a thirty-year exile, Siberian snow deputed wilderness, a friend and writer, then of the era of Nicholas the Ist, and Napoleon, thus  defeated within a Russian wilderness where winter exposed a death as no other to another gentry class, from a region called France.

Gentry and peasants, alike, a nation’s sentiments grow an imperative strike for an enemy’s onslaught where in Tolstoy’s own mind, a proportional deterring thematic refrain for a futile, colluded undermine, thus, no pain, for Mother Russia’s 19^th century time, and poetic devices, refraining from time to time.

Family histories and service records adorned, instead I say, to write his day, a unique

innovational  literary form.

Me and Tolstoy, deep within our bones, writing onward INK’g our way through poetic tones where his story that speaks with a military stone’s throw away from the glass houses crumbling Bolkonsky and Rostov’s aristocratic interior homes.

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My reasons for beginning this magnanimous literary analysis in a poetic form ( I hope I can complete this poetic journey), simply is to read the trilogy of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace with knowledge gained associated with poetic devices that work for my personal comprehension of such a masterpiece. As well, I hope to correlate the human nature of 19^th century Russia with 21^st century humanity’s human nature thus, discovering not only does and will history repeat itself, but that human nature never seems to change until we recognize our failures. Perhaps Tolstoy’s perception. At any rate I proceed onward as Napoleon force marched his army into Russian territory only to discover his own failings, an imperative to understanding myself, the history of a foreign super-power, and the inherent study of a great literary work.

I sincerely wish to write about the multitude of analytic forms more exclusively. There does remain many forms and I began learning from poet and author Annie Finch, PhD., who I was the mentee of for three months revising my first poetic manuscript Vehemence: In Silence We Weep in 2016. Annie is phenomenal regarding her teaching style. She is very down to earth, unassuming, and transparent with her highly skilled and educated writing I consider in terms of poetry the leading authority in the USA if not the world. I look forward to our next class together.

I recently (like a few hours ago), began thumbing through Annie’s book entitled, An Exaltation of Forms: Contemporary Poets Celebrate the Diversity of Their Art. The two forms that really caught my immediate attention was the French Villanelle the Pantoum also associated with Malay-Indonesian poetic form, and Hip-hop rap and poetry forms. Both of these forms have enthused me to write from each forms flow and rhythmic tones, thus feeling the beat and “hearing forward” that is a poetic device listening further ahead to what the artist perceives to deliver to her/his audience regarding Hip-hop.

As a novice trying to learn I will be studying more Hip-hop rap aspiring to learn more of this aesthetic phenomenon since my individualized devotion has been entirely dedicated

to trauma and the extensive damage by trauma to one’s self-esteem, life—style, finances, employment, relational, and other indifferences brought on by a forceful penetration of one’s own soul. This is destructive suffering all the while to my life experiences that in turn, we all may share.

So, I wonder, should I attempt a Hip-hop rhythm to Volume I, Upon Reading Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace’ an Introduction to Brevity? Should this be accomplished the classical Russian-English translation to the beat and form of Hip-hop would be a phenomenon itself since I have aspired to learn more of the Hip-hop culture since I heard a young, 30’s something man rapping his experience. I though, wow! This material was really something (since I was beginning my poetic journey then in 1999). I wanted to learn but became so involved in my experience I did not encounter again till reading the form book by Annie Finch. I will give this some thought and try to discover if it can all come together, but please do not expect me to recite because I do have memory troubles. I love to read but reciting I am not very good at.

What do you think? Can this be accomplished? We may see in the near, here and now.