PART I: poems i read by russian futurist vladimir mayakovsky and my feelings on them

To his Own Beloved Self, 1916

To All and Everything, 1916

Our March, 1917

Call To Account!, 1917

Attitude To A Miss, 1920

You, 1922

Back Home, 1925

Good!, 1927

Conversation with Comrade Lenin, 1929

My Soviet Passport, 1929

At the Top of My voice, 1930

Past One O’Clock ..., 1930

After reading these poems by Vladimir Mayakovsky, I noticed a man who was both deeply personal and icily distant. Mayakovsky’s poetic voice is powerful and discursive. It’s clear that he cares about his country very much. He has such strong desires that his words could be misconstrued as reckless abandonment of his self. I believe the contrary. Mayakovsky was a man who was very proud of his country and desired to have the working class overcome their adversity, to rise up and form a government free of old men’s’ traditions. He cared so deeply for this cause that his poems often digress into a furious tangent, and thus much of his poetry involves violence and allusions to war. His poems leave little ambiguity as to the message he is trying to convey to the reader. Poems like “Our March”, “Conversation with Comrade Lenin”, “My Soviet Passport” and “At the Top of My voice” are among the most notable in regards to Mayakovsky’s overt communist propagandist message.
The perceived recklessness is Mayakovsky’s way of conveying the message that he would die for his country. These poems are confessional, despite the political overtones. The poems I’ve read have painted an intimate portrait of a man who was tortured by his desires, personally and publicly. He references women in many of his poems and expresses a great ambivalence towards them. In one poem, entitled “You” Mayakovsky writes, “You seized/and snatched away my heart/and began/to play with it--/like a girl with a bouncing ball.” The tone of this poem seems rather playful, with the imagery being that of silly, bouncing things. His elation is clear in the description of the girl playing with his heart. At the same time, however, the idea of someone playing with his heart like a ball seems to suggest an underlying sensation of pain that comes with his love.
His ambivalence toward women is also exemplified in the poem “To All and Everything”: “I swear by my pagan strength--/gimme a girl,/young,/eye-filling, and I won’t waste my feelings on her./I’ll rape her/and spear her heart with a gibe/willingly.” Mayakovsky is pledging his allegiance to the Soviet cause, in this case at the expense of his own sexuality. Sex is subordinate to the political agenda he supports.
I read these poems chronologically and I found that after reading all the other poems, each replete with violence and rape fantasy, the most haunting poem was one that was discovered amongst his papers after his suicide in 1930. The poem is titled “Past One O’Clock…”:

“Past one o’clock. You must have gone to bed.
The Milky Way streams silver through the night.
I’m in no hurry; with lightning telegrams
I have no cause to wake or trouble you.
And, as they say, the incident is closed.
Love’s boat has smashed against the daily grind.
Now you and I are quits. Why bother then
To balance mutual sorrows, pains, and hurts.
Behold what quiet settles on the world.
Night wraps the sky in tribute from the stars.
In hours like these, one rises to address
The ages, history, and all creation.”

Mayakovsky’s lethargy is obvious in this poem. After finishing it for the first time, I felt a shiver. I found it to be a tragic, yet strangely beautiful end to a man so passionate and torn between his self and his state. Many of Mayakovsky’s poems contain many verbs, reference to movement, and recklessness, whereas this poem is more tranquil, with perhaps a twinge of disappointment at his unrealized dreams. After reading all of these poems, I felt very moved by the passion transmitted through his words. I was reminded of the first stanza of W.B. Yeats’ “The Second Coming”:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.”