In a sequence of poems in the dramatic monologue style, Charles Rammelkamp’s Catastroika covers a century of Russian history from the late Nineteenth to the late Twentieth, in the voices of a fictional Russian Jew, Alexander Federmesser (Sasha) and Maria Rasputin, the sole surviving daughter of the “mad monk,” Grigory Rasputin, the infamous spiritual advisor of the Romanovs, the last Russian Tsar, Nicholas, and his wife, Alexandra. Focusing on Grigory Rasputin largely through the eyes of his...
