Tag: poetry
Well done Miron!
http://hiphopdx.com/news/id.44401/title.russian-rap-battle-racks-up-15m-views-in-3-days#
Russian Rap Battle Racks Up 15M Views In 3 Days
August 16, 2017 | 7:20 PM
by Somhairle Cinnsealach
Russian Rap Battle Racks Up 15M Views In 3 Days
YouTube/versusbattleru
“War and Peace.” “Crime and Punishment.” Oxxxymiron vs. Slava KPSS.
All triumphs of Russian penmanship.
While even America’s most popular rap battlers generally max out at a few million YouTube views (a milestone that can sometimes take years to reach), Russian league Versus is sprinting past its competition — already racking up almost 15 million views on an hour-long video that came out on August 13.
The battle, which went down in St. Petersburg earlier in August, went crazy-viral in Russia, a country famous for its prowess with the written word.
We can’t understand any of it, of course, but if you’re confident in your Russian-speaking abilities then check out the battle below.
One of the competitors, Oxxxymiron, had been undefeated until he came up against his opponent, who took the W after a unanimous decision from the five judges.
As one of Russia’s biggest Hip Hop figures, Oxxxymiron’s battle rap showings have always generated huge interest, but nothing on this scale before.
According to a detailed piece by The Calvert Journal, “Even RIA Novosti, one of the biggest Russian news agencies, has published four news stories and a large feature on the battle in the last two days.”
After his defeat, Oxxxymiron shared an in-depth Instagram post following the battle.
168.1k likes
4,755 comments
Пара слов о баттле (спойлеры) 1. После драки кулаками не машут (объясните это СТ, который до сих пор доказывает, что выиграл). Поэтому судейское решение я, разумеется, принимаю. 2. На мероприятии были судьи, потому что я поставил такое условие. Вариант “мы час срем друг друга просто так, для взаимного промо” был для меня исключен, т.к. это не дружеский матч. Поражений, в отличие от забытого текста, я никогда не боялся, поэтому настоял на том, чтобы баттл судили – и считаю, что это было верное решение. 3. Почему я проиграл? Потому что, как и на прежних баттлах, ушел в лирические отступления, которые мне реально интересно писать, в отличие от бесконечного “сетап-панч, сетап-панч”. Возможно, я по жизни слишком зациклился на том, что в свое время повлиял на баттлрэп – а вместо этого мне самому стоит поучиться у баттловиков, чей мир с тех пор перерос в нечто иное и самостоятельное. Хотя гонка за количеством панчей все еще кажется мне довольно унылым подходом к баттлам. Но и мой подход “проповедник а-ля Loaded Lux” явно требует корректировки на будущее. Не будь проигрыша – я бы, наверное, так и не осознал, что нужен апгрейд. Апгрейд будет, Нарния пока подождет. 4. От всего мероприятия получил дикий кайф. Единственный облом – “поддержка” Версуса. С таким же успехом мы могли сразу пойти на Слово с 10 корешами – именно столько человек активно топило за нас, остальные версус-резиденты были типа слишком крутыми, чтобы высказывать саппорт рэперам своей лиги, как это делала толпа от Слово (по видео все очевидно, я думаю). Ну и сливщики инфы – конченые. 5. Make Battle Rap Great Again: сказано – сделано, это был исторический баттл. Оппонент молодец. Может теперь кто-нибудь поймет, что я не забронзовевшая статуя, не все всегда просчитываю, и готов рискнуть всем чисто по фану, из спортивного интереса. И вскоре сделаю это снова)
5 DAYS AGO
Google Chrome’s translation of Oxxxymiron’s Instagram post goes on to explain why he felt he lost the clash, and why there are no hard feelings.
“Why did I lose? Because, like on the previous battles, I went into lyrical digressions, which I really enjoy writing, unlike the endless “setup-punch, setup-punch.” Maybe I’m too focused on life, That at one time influenced the Battleplay – and instead I myself should learn from the Battlists, whose world has since grown into something different and independent. Although the race for the amount of panche still seems to me a rather dull approach to the battles. But my approach “preacher a la Loaded Lux” clearly requires adjustments for the future. Without losing – I probably would not have realized that I needed an upgrade. Upgrade will be, Narnia will wait.”
“Make Battle Rap Great Again: said – done, it was a historical battle. Opponent well done. Maybe now someone will understand that I’m not a moribund statue, I do not always calculate everything, and I’m ready to risk everything purely for fans, out of sports interest. And I’ll do it again soon).”
from Hiphopdx.com
Will it last?
I have been making some videos about poetry, some for British schools and some for a Russian university. I was asked this morning whether one of the poems I have recited is a great poem or not. It made me think.
There are certainly great poems in the anthologies I am using, but, to be frank, there is also alot of rubbish. When it comes to Stephen Spender’s poetry, I am really not sure what to say. He was one of two poets I met while I was an undergraduate- the other was Elizabeth Jennings with whom bizarrely I shared lodgings down winchester road. She was nocturnal, peculiar, deeply religious and also a film fan. There was a time when the two of us went repeatedly to see Attenborough’s “Gandhi”- at one point she was astonished to be tossed out of the cinema by an usher who thought she was a tramp. I rented a converted conservatory in the garden, and Elizabeth Jennings used to come into the garden and watch my rabbits. We also gossiped about John Gielgud and Daniel Day Lewis who was her godson and was about to take over from Rupert Everett in “Another Country”. What an interesting lady, and, of course, when I read her poetry today, I can still hear the cadence of her own voice, and her writing, thus, is coloured by a starry-eyed memory.
Spender brings with him some of the Elizabeth Jennings’ baggage in so far as he was also linked to many people in the arts’ world, and meeting him was a bit like touching literary divinity. Or was it minor sanctity?
The problem with Stephen Spender is that he is not really very good. Even in his day, he was regarded as second-rate, a cheap Rupert Brooke. So much so that Cyril Connolly pulled him up over his “bad writing”. But he enjoyed “being a poet”. There is a story which he quotes in his own memoir “World Within World” where he meets TSEliot for lunch and Eliot asks him what he plans to be in life-
I said: “Be a poet.” “I can understand you wanting to write poems, but I don’t quite know what you mean by ‘being a poet,'” he objected.
His was, I fear, the pose of “being a poet” rather than actually doing the job. He wrote a good deal (again in his memoir, he confesses that he wrote four poems a day while Auden managed only one in three weeks, but the quality control was different). He enjoyed the image- so much so that the leader of the communist party apparently said that the best thing Spender could do for the cause was to follow Byron and die. There is even a link between Elizabeth Jennings and Stephen Spender- Cecil Day Lewis was one of Spender friends!
Like the current Minister of Education in Russia, Spender also admired Stalin. “Forward to Liberalism” is evidence of his gullibility, stupidity, naïveté. But it is the way he seems to have treated his lovers that really gets my goat. I don’t have alot of time for people who indulge in open relationships- in the end someone always gets hurt, but Spender seems to have gone on and on with this – leaving his first lover to tend to his garden, abandoning his first wife Inez Pearn, and cheating on his second. To judge from the account given by his sculptor son Matthew, Natasha Litvin was determined to brazen it out. When his mother died, Matthew opened up a can of worms that was an open secret anyway.
“Her take on her marriage is that my father, when he met her, had put his former homosexual life aside and become totally straight and faithful to her. This is a myth that meant a great deal to her, even after Dad had died. But she knew that I didn’t really go for it, and she knew that I felt that once Dad was dead his life should be reinterpreted in a different way. For a start, my father left hundreds of indiscreet letters all over the place. But there was never a confrontation; we just simply didn’t mention it, either of us.”
In the end, I think we read Spender only because he lived so long and knew so many people. Even his exposure in a portrait by Hugh David and then in the Leavitt book “While England Sleeps” that makes it quite clear he never took his parents’ advice to avoid the company of “rough” boys, adds to his image. It is that image, rather than any of his actual writing that will be remembered.
Some videos for the Moscow State Pedagogic University
I was asked to do some videos to help with phonetics in Moscow. Here are the first two:
animate-tim.com 