{"id":1185,"date":"2008-03-21T00:04:07","date_gmt":"2008-03-21T06:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1185"},"modified":"2008-03-21T21:18:36","modified_gmt":"2008-03-22T03:18:36","slug":"poetry-friday-confluences-come-when-they-will-or-how-to-get-from-lucinda-williams-to-the-siege-of-leningrad-in-a-single-blog-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/?p=1185","title":{"rendered":"Poetry Friday: Confluences come when they will… or, how to get from Lucinda Williams to the Siege of Leningrad in a single blog post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Soviet ski troops near the Hermitage Museum heading to the front.<\/a>Here’s something you might not know: Lucinda Williams<\/strong><\/a>, an excellent songwriter for whom Jules and I share a deep and abiding love, is the daughter of a poet. I think I had maybe read that in an interview or two, long ago, and then more or less forgot about it. But I recently stumbled across this article about the two of them<\/strong><\/a>, and my interest was piqued. So I looked up Miller Williams<\/strong><\/a>, and I found out that he read a poem at President Clinton’s second inauguration. I also discovered this poem, “The Curator.”<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

There are images here that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Seriously. <\/p>\n

The poem takes place during the Siege of Leningrad<\/strong><\/a> in WWII. The narrator, a young curator at the State Hermitage Museum<\/strong><\/a> (Did you see Russian Ark<\/em><\/strong><\/a>? Yeah, that<\/em> place), describes how the museum staff had prepared for the German onslaught by packing up the paintings and storing them elsewhere. But they left the frames hanging on the walls to make it easier to rehang the paintings when it’s safe again…<\/p>\n

Nothing will seem surprised or sad again
\ncompared to those imperious, vacant frames. <\/p>\n

Well, the staff stayed on to clean the rubble
\nafter the daily bombardments. We didn\u2019t dream\u2014
\nYou know it lasted nine hundred days.
\nMuch of the roof was lost and snow would lie
\nsometimes a foot deep on this very floor,
\nbut the walls stood firm and hardly a frame fell. <\/p>\n

Here is the story, now, that I want to tell you.
\nEarly one day, a dark December morning,
\nwe came on three young soldiers waiting outside,
\npacing and swinging their arms against the cold.
\nThey told us this: in three homes far from here
\nall dreamed of one day coming to Leningrad
\nto see the Hermitage, as they supposed
\nevery Soviet citizen dreamed of doing.
\nNow they had been sent to defend the city,
\na turn of fortune the three could hardly believe. <\/p>\n

I had to tell them there was nothing to see
\nbut hundreds and hundreds of frames where the paintings had hung. <\/p>\n

\u201cPlease, sir,\u201d one of them said, \u201clet us see them.\u201d <\/p>\n

And so we did. It didn\u2019t seem any stranger
\nthan all of us being here in the first place,
\ninside such a building, strolling in snow. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A gallery in the HermitageThere’s one of the images that has seared itself into my brain: soldiers, standing in an opulent gallery strewn with rubble and snow, staring at empty picture frames while the curators… well, you really must read the rest of the poem<\/strong><\/a>. Goosebumps guaranteed.<\/p>\n

Apparently this is based in fact, too. Here’s an article from an exhibition<\/strong><\/a> at the Hermitage about the Siege years that describes what life was like for the curators:<\/p>\n

“The museum not only withstood the bombings, but continued its routine work, safeguarding its exhibits and buildings, hosting surrealistic tours of its vacant halls… The starving defenders of the Hermitage found solace in the thought that core collections would survive though they themselves might die.”<\/p>\n

Amazing, isn’t it? What a story. And what a poem. And what a weird confluence of topics in this one blog post.<\/p>\n

*** edited to add…<\/em> ***<\/center><\/p>\n

Poetry Goddess Elaine is on round-up duty at Wild Rose Reader<\/strong><\/a>. Do check out the other entries, if you haven’t already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here’s something you might not know: Lucinda Williams, an excellent songwriter for whom Jules and I share a deep and abiding love, is the daughter of a poet. I think I had maybe read that in an interview or two, long ago, and then more or less forgot about it. But I recently stumbled across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-poetry-friday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blaine.org\/sevenimpossiblethings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}