Elena Grodskaya. Air Fleece

Air Fleece
Ioffe L. Short metro. - M.: OGI, 2001. - 104 p.

Elena Grodskaya

Publication date: August 21, 2001

In the poems of Leonid Ioffe, everything is united and inseparable, as in moments of a life filled to the brim: it seems that one more drop will overflow.

I wish I could grab it with my omnivorous jaws
to the pasture of news and secrets,
to the brutal grape sweetness,
overflowing with it, cry out.

Words-thoughts, words-feelings. It turns out that the inexpressible can be expressed if you “let the words go free” ( M. Eisenberg ). The attitude towards the word as a relative (both his own and other words) distinguishes Joffe from many modern poets who rejoice in all kinds of alienation.

To call Joffe's poems a rhymed stream of consciousness is tempting, but not entirely accurate. It's more like a flow of breath.

Let our groan be filled with bloody ripeness,
hereditary ripeness, still lives behind us -
this house is beautiful and menacing and merciless -
our earthly home, where together we struggle with the basics,
where we catch the air like fish, we catch it with our mouths
together and separately and again we wait for the abyss.

For Joffe, the external and internal are interpenetrable, and it is not clear where, for example, the hand ends and the air begins. So, this is me, but this is no longer me or still me? “Rather, empty yourself, / empty yourself as to neutralize,” “And so that the present earthly beauty / grows proportionally in height, / simple speech falls on a clear course, / taking a bird’s wedge for a waking post.”

In Joffe's poems there are experiences, pain, regrets and other elegiac feelings, but there is also a feeling that, nevertheless, “everything turned out right.” “The burning sensation of the sun” makes you leave yourself, come back, get up from your knees, get on your knees, and “little happiness” “chars the days,” and you want to talk, talk, talk. In essence, it doesn’t matter what it’s about, the flowing, fluttering, stumbling, seething speech is important, the beauty of articulation, the curvature and mutual reflection of mirrors is important. This is essential for everyone: “After all, I brought a petition to my brothers in the name / of that unity that has no bottom.”

Nature is a “participant in everything,” there is the same chaos and the same order (at the same time) as inside.

The foliage turns
residential contours, mountain ringing -
teaching us to be aware
whatever the names please.

“Blessed, meaningless word”... Not quite like that. Joffe's poems are sophisticated and associatively thought out. Mikhail Aizenberg (compiler of the book, who in the late 60s and early 70s belonged to the same poetic circle as Ioffe) wrote about this author: “The combination of unsteadiness and structure is amazing, the combination of soaring rhythm and verse speed with a thrice-thought-out, thrice-weighty word.” . In fact, the precision of moves and absolute freedom are obvious. As you know, freedom is a conscious necessity, a voluntary submission to this necessity . “When a line is dictated by a feeling, / it sends a slave to the stage...” And, probably, it is no coincidence that the same iambic and the same slave.

Without piecing it together
inexhaustible speech -
you cut through it like a scooter,
and fly around her like a tornado,

don't reject her cupids,
and don’t gather dust under it like belongings,
and babble her like a fool,
and obey her like a slave.

You can’t say for sure what Joffe dictates the line: “clean wind”, “sadness and air”, “rebellion of rocks”, “armor of evil loneliness” or “daily love”. The poems manage to balance on the brink of naturalness, organicity, spontaneity and reflection in relation to how they are made. (We are often talking about speech.) A certain exoticism of the vocabulary, sound whimsicality (especially in the early poems) makes each poem a festive rainbow fragment of speech reality. Moreover, this reality is by no means closed, it absorbs “someone’s hearts and hands.”

True, the bitterness of the later poems (“no longer alive, not yet dead”) is not at all festive.

Far from relatives
he lives like in the gardens,
not seeing it as anyone’s fault,
who needs him like that,
except for children,
so that they are not called orphans,
except for the wife,
so that she would not be called a widow.

However, a single core is felt both at the beginning and at the end of the collection (“We are / almost the same from the inside / as we seemed to ourselves / all our lives”). “All Life” - in a hundred pages that can save you from the deepest hibernation.

There is a final fit of life,
that last round of impulse -
without regard for the rest of life,
from madness to a hair's breadth,

inside out, like a confession, pour out,
go through incoherent speeches,
become confessions like a stream and an avalanche
and hum something about intimacy,

and desperately and uncontrollably
collapse, plump at the feet of love
and catch the edge of her tender clothes
and catch airy hands,

fall into unconsciousness and recklessness,
as if tomorrow is the sky and the light
will stagger and shake
and the building of years will collapse.

That's all - all that's left is to hug,
muttering and breaking into a scream,
bursting with love and pity,
adoration, tenderness and pain.