Features of American life impress Mayakovsky

1. Which features of American life impress Mayakovsky? What things does he criticize? Are there aspects of American life about which he seems ambivalent? 2. What sorts of things, in Mayakovsky’s opinion, set Chicago, New York, and Detroit apart from one another? What similarities do they have? 3. Apply question 1 to Esenin’s Iron Mirgorod. 4. What points of agreement can you find between Mayakovsky and Esenin? What points of disagreement? 5. Clearly, both of these accounts were acceptable in the main to Soviet censors, because both were approved for publication in the Soviet Union. However, can you identify any details in either account that might not have been pleasing to a Soviet censor? Just use your imagination— I don’t expect you to be familiar with Soviet history or Soviet censorship.