Poetry for students of Russian (and Czech)

[Jeff Holdeman]

Dear lovers of Russian poetry,

Our Russian Club will be sponsoring a spring poetry contest, and I am trying to
 gather a
variety of poems for the students to choose from.  I am looking for well-known
 (or good
lesser-known) poems that the students can impress people with now and later on
 in life.
The criteria are:

*maximum 3-5 minutes in length (can be excerpts from longer poems please
 indicate
beginning and end)
*a variety of levels of difficulty [beginners (1st year), intermediate (2nd-3rd
 year), advanced
(4th year and above)]
*a mixture of children's, humorous, modern, and classical poetry

Please send me off-list the names of the poems, the author's name, and an
 indication of the
level you think they should be used at (maybe with a reason, e.g., meter, rhyme
 scheme,
lexicon), and I will make the list available as a summary posting and/or on a
 webpage
somewhere.

(And to you Czech enthusiasts out there, if you would like to send in your Czech
submissions, I will gladly receive them and make the results available.)

Thank you in advance,

Jeff Holdeman
The Ohio State University
holdeman.2 at osu.edu