Modern poet Irina Astahova and perception of her creativity in the internet

Abstract

The article analyzes Internet resources dedicated to the work of contemporary poetess Irina Astakhova (pseudonym Ah Astakhova), and first of all readers’ comments on her poetry. Irina Astakhova is a popular modern poet, publishes books, tours, has commercial success. The material for the study was the comments of her poems by readers in social networks and video sharing “YouTube”. Methods of observation and analysis, comparison, interpretation were applied. The poetry of Irina Astakhova, despite the low quality, evokes in the overwhelming majority of readers enthusiastic responses. A modern Russian man strives for poetry, wants to read it, listen, see the poet, and is ready to pay money for it. At the same time, lack of education and low level of reading competence prevent the lovers of poetry from understanding where the real poetry is, and where the fake. At the same time in social networks and video hosting “YouTube” there is a small number of negative reviews about the poetry of Irina Astakhova, whose authors were able to see the emptiness of content and the primitiveness of the form of her poems. The presence of such comments from non-specialists (albeit a little, in social networks about one percent) allows us to talk about the cultural potential of the modern reader, his ability to recognize low-quality poetry. The great traditions of Russian poetry, including the work of remarkable women poets, have a cultural response and are potentially capable of forming in the non-specialist reader a negative attitude toward the creativity of contemporary poets, which does not meet the high criteria of the Russian poetic text.

Keywords

• poetry
• modern poetry
• irina astakhova
• internet
• social networks
• comments
• “likes”
• emoticons