That's the whole point though: it's a puzzle for the brain. If it were explicitly spelled out the fun would be lost.
Personally I think of art as programming using symbols that have been previously uploaded into the audience. Incidentally, this is why sometimes it is easy for art to cross language and culture boundaries, and sometimes very hard: it just depends on whether the symbols are something universal for all humanity or specific to a particular culture.
In Russia in particular there is a common view that poetry should:
- rhyme
- have a flowing rhythm
- be very literal/descriptive
and there is certainly a lot of good poetry like that. But sometimes artists break rules for fun. Stepanova to Pushkin is what Aphex Twin is to Mozart. Just have some fun with it and don't worry if it fits into preconceived notions of what is good poetry.
In the spirit of fun: have you noticed that there are two sets of sentence breaks in the poem, one on the line breaks and one at the punctuation? This actually changes word association and the imagery. Think this was an accident?
Having dissected probably hundreds of literary works in school, including "notice how the sentence breaks", I have very high tolerance against questions like "do you think it's a coincidence"? 25 years ago I could write a four-page essay on this poem alone without breaking a sweat (4 pages was a requirement to pass graduation exams).
So yes, this style actually could be a coincidence: anything from subconsciously or consciously emulating a style to just stumbling into this form to being a bad poet to having too much fun with punctuation to...
Also, in this particular case there are literally only two sentences that don't break at punctuation point, and I do think this is not entirely intentional. Call this a feeling :)
> In Russia in particular there is a common view that poetry should: - rhyme - have a flowing rhythm - be very literal/descriptive
This is definitely true. Free verse is a relatively rare beast. Here's an example from Alexander Blok [1]. And look, it also has break at both punctuation and in the middle of a sentence hmmmm ;)
Personally I think of art as programming using symbols that have been previously uploaded into the audience. Incidentally, this is why sometimes it is easy for art to cross language and culture boundaries, and sometimes very hard: it just depends on whether the symbols are something universal for all humanity or specific to a particular culture.
In Russia in particular there is a common view that poetry should: - rhyme - have a flowing rhythm - be very literal/descriptive
and there is certainly a lot of good poetry like that. But sometimes artists break rules for fun. Stepanova to Pushkin is what Aphex Twin is to Mozart. Just have some fun with it and don't worry if it fits into preconceived notions of what is good poetry.
In the spirit of fun: have you noticed that there are two sets of sentence breaks in the poem, one on the line breaks and one at the punctuation? This actually changes word association and the imagery. Think this was an accident?