Prof. Lee B. Croft has taught Russian at Arizona State
University for thirty-five years. From 1975 to 1995 he evolved an
approach to teaching a second-year-level two-semester Russian conversation course (RUS-211/212) that required his students to memorize and recite Russian poetry on a schedule and to sing chorally a selection of well-known Russian songs. This book,
Russian Through Poems and Songs (Alternative Copy Service, Tempe, AZ, 1995) is the text that sprang out of that approach. The book begins with a bi-lingual (English and marked-stress Russian facing texts) article entitled "Why Memorize?--The Neurolinguistics of Memorization in Foreign Language Pedagogy." In this article Prof. Croft defends his methodology on several grounds. Then begins the elaboration of the 18 Russian poetic masterpieces that he requires the students to learn and recite from memory--works in chronological order required at about every two weeks interval for both semesters of an academic year: two by Gavril Derzhavin, three by Alexander Pushkin, three by Mikhail Lermontov, two by Fyodor Tiutchev, a prose quote by Denis Fonvizin, another by Ivan Turgenev, another by Leo Tolstoy, then a poem by Alexander Blok, a poem by Sergei Esenin, two poems by Anna Akhmatova, and a poem by Boris Pasternak. Each poem to be recited is accompanied by grammatical explanations in a glossary keyed to each text and by numerous previously published
translations, mostly VERSE translations preserving form, into English and even other languages like Spanish, French, and German. The text is copiously illustrated with portraits of each poet (complete with the poet's signature), English relations about their lives and times, and associated art. Many poems of related Russian poets are also given (e.g. Mayakovsky, Selvinsky, Tsvetaeva), though not required for recitation. And then there are similar treatments of twenty Russian songs...old "favorites" heavily identified with the Russian culture, forming a "common corpus" of cultural understanding between the students and the people they are studying: "Dark Eyes," "Katiusha," "Moscow Nights," and "The Song of the Volga Boatmen" are examples. There is an accompanying audio CD available and an internet download is in the works. But that is not all. There is also a section of Russian translations of Great English and American poetry featuring the Russian verse versions of works by Edgar Allan Poe, William Blake, Rudyard Kipling and others (even Joseph Brodsky's Russian version of Muhammad Ali's doggerel). And there are Russian translations of famous English-language songs too: "Amazing Grace," "America the Beautiful," and "Swing low, sweet chariot," and others. Prof. Croft's text has garnered positive evaluations of two generations of Arizona State
University's Russian students (see his book,
Russian in Arizona: A History of its Teaching, IIHS, Tempe, AZ/Perm, Russia, 2007, available through www.lulu.com and reviewed on www.shvoong.com by this author) and has been used at several other universities (University of Arizona, University of the South, e.g.) and at the GRINT higher educational institute in Moscow.