Hotel Room

Hierarchy

by cathryn b. campbell

Poems from Kyrgyzstan

by david dry

For the 2016-17 academic year, A-B Tech history instructor David Dry has been teaching at the International University of Kyrgyzstan in Bishkek as a Fulbright Scholar, and he has selected poetry from a few of his students in Kyrgyzstan for inclusion in The Rhapsodist. With a landscape dominated by some of the world’s tallest mountains, Kyrgyzstan is sometimes referred to as "the Switzerland of Central Asia." Its people, the Kyrgyz, were historically nomads. Traveling from place to place on horseback and raising herds of sheep, the Kyrgyz people did not initially develop of an extensive written culture. Instead, poetry and storytelling took oral form. Bards, known as Manaschi, specialized in reciting from memory a story now known as The Epic of Manas, often considered the world’s longest epic poem. The Epic of Manas recounts the mythical exploits and battles of the Kyrgyz hero Manas, and it still serves as a source of unity and identity for the Kyrgyz people. Russian, and later Soviet, infiltration into the region introduced new literary forms, and although artistic works were subject to censorship in the Soviet Union, some Kyrgyz authors critiqued Soviet society. The most renowned of all Kyrgyz authors was novelist Chinghiz Aitmatov. In his work, Aitmatov underscored tensions between Kyrgyz traditions and the atheist and corrupt aspects of Soviet modernity, and it surprised many at the time that some of his works were permitted to be published by Soviet authorities. Now, twenty-five years following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the artists of Kyrgyzstan are free to express their thoughts without restrictions. During his time in Kyrgyzstan, Instructor David Dry encountered several students with a passion for expressing themselves through poetry. While these students represent a continuation of the literary and poetic traditions of Kyrgyzstan, the themes of their submissions transcend culture and demonstrate how some emotions are universal in the human experience. Their work is presented here in English and Russian, which remains one of the official languages of Kyrgyzstan.