Salon

Yelena Fanailova is an M.D., and worked as a physician for six years. Since the mid-1990s, she has worked as a correspondent on Radio Liberty. She is also one of the most acclaimed poets of her generation.

In Russia, poetry has long been confined to an elitist ghetto. Recently, there have been some signs that this situation may be changing: Attendance at poetry festivals has increased, poetry readings in downtown clubs have attracted thousands and even fashion magazines have started publishing poems. However, the controversy caused by Fanailova's publication in the July issue of Znamya, a literary journal with limited circulation, is something out of the ordinary.

In her collection of poems, "The Baltic Diary," Fanailova touched upon issues that can be summarized as the relationship between the intelligentsia and the people. For Russian intellectuals, this theme is an eternal one. Fanailova attributed her collection to her "inner African-American" so as to distance herself from the language and the violent feelings expressed in the poems, but this is a thin disguise. Because there is nothing distanced in her text, and all its feelings and language (excluding the four-letter-words) are typical of Russian intelligentsia.

In one text, she describes a posse of Russian fascists going to a conference in Kaliningrad. In another, she writes about a couple of "ordinary Russians." The husband is a police officer who, it's implied, would gladly beat the crap out of any intellectual.

In today's political and cultural climate, the response to the poems was quite heated. The internet portal Openspace.ru devoted a column to this collection, where two prominent critics expressed their opinions (one was "for" Fanailova, the other "against"). The comments included the standard phrase, "This is not poetry," the even more standard, "What has she done for this nation to stand in judgment?" and "a woman shouldn't swear like this."

There is nothing unique about the sentiments in Fanailova's poems or their expression. Moreover, if these poems had been published in the 1990s, nobody would have batted an eyelid. Are they any good? I don't really know; Fanailova's is a type of poetry I find alien. Some of her texts are powerful, but this particular collection is not a masterpiece.

It may be a good thing that poetry hasn't lost its ability to stir the feelings -- always the hallmark of Russian literature -- but in this case, the reaction of the critics was, in my opinion, misguided. It's poetry, for goodness' sake; it should not be treated like a political statement.