This began as a game some bloggers played in 2008, to write about people who'd made an impact, in the same number of words as one's age, every day for a year. I did them less often and went on longer, adding one word each birthday. I stopped in 2016 and incorporated them into my main poetry blog. In 2019 I resumed the project and gave it its own blog again, with a new name, where it may unfold at its own (slow, intermittent) pace. I've labelled these verse portraits, but they're more like quick sketches: mere glimpses, impressions....


Monday 4 August 2008

Solzhenitsyn

Goodbye, Aleksandr,
legend of my lifetime.
Who'd have thought you would die
at 89 in your own country?

You yourself helped
to bring that about
with the smuggled book.

It seemed, after that
and your move to safety,
everything started changing.
What you brought to light
could not be re-concealed.

I read you were crusty
(surely you were entitled)
and disliked the West.
Or were you just homesick?



[Poem #36]
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