[versale]

For those who reads Russian this is the best her verse as rated at [1].

  Утреннее солнце восходит утром –
  Столько соблазнительных вероятий!
  Что же ты, девка, ходишь по квартире,
  Тапками стуча, пятки печатая?

  Что тебе, голубка моя лебёдка?
  Поворотись-ка, сними последнее,
  В золотое зеркало полюбуйся,
  Это и то вперёд выдвигая.

  И чу! Я слышу глухое биенье.
  Тепло бокам и шея удлинилась.
  Ноги не радуют, но белым перьям
  Многие подруги позавидуют.

  Достаточно сделать движенье крылом –
  В животе ухает; паркет остался
  Далеко внизу; родные, простите,
  Пишите мне до востребования.

  – Бессмертная, навеки бессмертна я,
  Стиксу не быть для меня преградою!

[1] https://readrate.com/rus/news/luchshie-sovremennye-russkie-s...

[lovelyviking]

If she is the best living Russian poet and this is the best her verse, then the whole Russian poetry is in very poor quality. I find nothing fascinating here at all. Even rythm is broken but not in a good way. Just broken.

[versale]

I've never heard of Maria (though can't say I'm an expert in poetry). That's why I decided to do some research and found this.

Hm, I had to read the lines three times, slowly, to reconstruct the image the author tried to convey. And this was the first layer. Apparently there is another one inside, but I presume this second layer resembles a Rorschach test: everybody is welcome to see what ever she/he wants to see. That's quite an achievement for those who care about pumping up readers' self-esteem. Especially if the readers see poetry as gymnastics for brain.

[ordu]

It reminds me of English poetry. I never understood the point of it. Blamed by bad English skills for that. But this verse looks just like English poetry just in Russian. Russian text written in a way to make it difficult to read, to hide the fact that the author had nothing to say, but had said nonetheless.

Or, maybe, not "to hide"? If it is an attempt to hide, then it would be a failed attempt. Maybe she had some other goals in her mind when wrote this?

[mistrial9]

".. if this person shows that example, then all of X is broken" -> use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument.

[MichaelMoser123]

i am no expert in contemporary poetry, however on the TV station "дождь"/rain they used to read modern poems right before the evening news program, and these poems make much more sense. However I didn't find a collection of these poems.

[voqv]

I haven't read much modern Russian poetry, but this really isn't that good. There are way better contemporary examples.

[dmitriid]

In my late teens I had tons of poetry of similar quality [1] Why am I not the greatest living Russian poet? :)

[1] https://old.dmitriid.com/projects/literary.html See "Абстрактизация", or even "В огОроде" (or anything else :)) )

[selivanovp]

I have no clue who said that Stepanova is a greatest poet, especially since the quoted poetry is complete garbage.

[tclover]

hm... So according to who she is "one of greatest"? My second question is how is this hacker news relevant?

[mellosouls]

Apart from the guidelines wrt "intellectual curiosity" pointed to you elsewhere, perhaps you can grant her admission for discussion as:

She is the founder of Colta, the only independent crowd-funded source of information in Russia. The high-traffic online publication has been called a Russian Huffington Post in format and style, and has also been compared to The New York Review of Books for the scope and depth of its long essays.

https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/mad-russia-hurt-me-into-...

The website is also mentioned in the OP article.

[Ralfp]

Hacker News Guidelines

What to Submit On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[cookieswumchorr]

when I went to school in Russia the great writers were those whos portraits we had on the wall in literature class. I'm sure she was not among them ))) I've tried reading her book "in memory of memories" got stuck, but not in an unpleasant way, maybe will give it a try later;

[1cvmask]

As relevant as Eddie Murphy Coming to America perhaps.

[azangru]

> My second question is how is this hacker news relevant?

And the third question is, how is she on the front page? Are there that many readers of Hacker News who are interested in contemporary Russian poetry?