Sergey Yesenin and his poems

Sergey Aleksandrovich Yesenin was born on 3 October 1895 (21 September in the old style) in the village of Konstantinovo in Ryazan province in a simple peasant family. Because of his poor father he was raised in his grandfather’s family, learned to read at five, and from nine began writing poems similar to folk songs. After finishing a school for village teachers, at 17 he went to Moscow, worked as a proofreader in a printing house, and from 19 his poems were published in journals; in 1915 he met Aleksandr Blok in Petrograd. In 1922–1923 he travelled around Europe with the American dancer Isadora Duncan and spent four months in the USA; he died tragically on 28 December 1925. His poems are written in short lines, in fluent and simple language, with village sincerity; although he could not go to Iran, he lived in Azerbaijan, felt the Eastern spirit and created the cycle “Persian Motifs”. Erkin Vohidov translated many of Yesenin’s poems into Uzbek, and this poetry influenced Uzbek poets such as Erkin Vohidov and Muhammad Yusuf.