A poet from this country used his own blood to write the poem,“Goodbye, My Friend, Goodbye” before hanging himself. For 10 points each:
[10e] Name this home country of Sergei Yesenin. Osip Mandelstam referred to a leader of this country as a “Kremlin mountaineer” in an epigram.
ANSWER: Soviet Union [or the USSR; or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; or CCCP; or Soviet Russia; prompt on Russia or Rossiya]
[10h] This poet lamented Yesenin’s early death in his poem “To Sergei Yesenin.” This poet of “A Cloud in Trousers” was the most famous signatory of the manifesto “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste.”
ANSWER: Vladimir Mayakovsky
[10m] Mayakovsky’s suicide in turn inspired this other Russian poet to write “Mayakovsky in 1913.” This poet recalled being asked “Can you describe this?” in her poem “Requiem.”
ANSWER: Anna Akhmatova
<JO, Poetry>