The Stars and the Cookie Jar

I have no idea the kind of writer Raissa might have been, if she had lived; Violeta was very good, certainly, her style was very clean and oh, it was different; her style leant on Raissa's, but Raissa had more youth and unpolished edges.

I'm noticing we have a thing in common: she went for sound. Sound makes me roll over and loll if it's rich and wild enough; I occasionally will put up with simplistic or obvious language for the sake of it. Raissa -- hm, how can I say this -- her poems strike me as her rough work, the conceptual stuff. The way she worked out her issues.

She could bang out the cold, hard, quick rhymed satire and work in layers about peaches from Russia, things that will never exist; rolling around in a barrel, Diogenes in a barrel.

But when she wrote with that big, grand signature, Katriel, it had a certain coolness and sharp distance; it couldn't be anything but the satire of those who know they are sofuckingdoomed.

And when she wrote poems, they were the poems of someone who's grown up so fast, but still writes in colored inks in notebooks under the quilt at night.

Yes, yes, for a contrast study, all right, a poem of Raissa's and one of Violeta's; I could do that.

Might even do one of the English verses. They're not so striking as the Yiddish, but they're conceptually easier, and as far as Violeta, well, she's best known for a love song about a stolen overcoat, so everything else is the upgrade.

Comments? Thoughts? Chickens?