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Last poetry megathread is archived, so I thought I'd open up a new one. The last one was never exactly thriving, but there were some pretty hot opinions going around. I guess I'll just leave you with a couple of (in my opinion) underappreciated late 19th century poets, namely Ernest Dowson and John Davidson, both of whom led tragic lives. Now Dowson is hardly unknown among aficionados of Aesthetic/Decadent poetry, so some of you may know him, but he's always been more of a poet's poet. Here are some representative works of his. The first two have somehow each leant a phrase that's become embedded in the English language (namely "days of wine and roses" and "gone with the wind," respectively), despite Dowson's general obscurity. https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/vitae-summa-brevis-spem-nos-vetat-incohare-longam http://www.bartleby.com/336/687.html (this Latin title means "I am not what I was under the reign of the good Cynara) https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/amor-umbratilis/ (title means something like "Secluded Love," "Esoteric Love," but literally "Shadowy Love") http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dowson/7.html http://poetry.elcore.net/CatholicPoets/Dowson/Dowson45.html Dowson's Collected Poems, edited by R.K.R. Thornton, is out of print and comes at a somewhat hefty price for a slim volume, but there are few purchases I'd recommend more if you're into this sort of thing. Then here is Davidson's best poem, imo (I'd almost call it great): http://www.bartleby.com/103/21.html Oh and as a bonus here is an absolutely beautiful edition of Oscar Wilde's long poem "Sphinx" with illustrations (or "decorations") by Charles Ricketts, available for free. W.B. Yeats had the highest praise for this edition in particular. https://archive.cnx.org/contents/4ee68efc-cc76-4d95-a107-4f268de24664@2/the-sphinx-by-oscar-wilde-with-decorations-by-charles-ricketts-1894
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# ? Mar 15, 2018 16:48 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 05:41 |
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The poem I know best is TS Eliot's Prufrock, since a professor in college was very into New Criticism and liked to say how all the modern readings of Prufrock were wrong. I have his analysis saved for posterity: I agree with his interpretation, but I also think he reads like a parody of old professors. quote:I will give some examples of the howlers below, but I cannot resist starting with the skilled Harvard-educated commentator's analysis of the ending of the poem, and in particular Prufrock's famous question to himself: "Do I dare to eat a peach?" quote:Then here is Davidson's best poem, imo (I'd almost call it great): Pretty good. Poems that rhyme sure are easier to read than the modern stuff. Makes Hell sound a bit weak though. Ccs fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Mar 17, 2018 |
# ? Mar 17, 2018 02:24 |
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I've spent the last 6 months debating whether to learn Catalan so I can read Arnaut Daniel that's my poetry story atm
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# ? Mar 17, 2018 05:00 |
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She waited, shuddering in her room, Till sleep had fallen on all the house. 30 She never flinched; she faced her doom: They two must sin to keep their vows. This house/vows rhyme is the worst. Poetry is so great but I wish it wasn't so easy to ruin a perfectly fine poem by doing one stupid thing. edit: there's a few bad things and now I hate this poem CestMoi fucked around with this message at 05:07 on Mar 17, 2018 |
# ? Mar 17, 2018 05:05 |
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CestMoi posted:I've spent the last 6 months debating whether to learn Catalan so I can read Arnaut Daniel that's my poetry story atm You mean Occitan I hope. There's a collection of troubadour poetry called Lark In The Morning which has the facing provencal text, and all the Arnaut Daniel poems in it are translated by Ezra Pound; in fact, not sure if he's the only one to have done so (Daniel into English). His translations are astoundingly rigorous in their replication of the meter and rhyme. With that for foundation, and if you know French, it's fairly easy to appreciate the original.
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# ? Mar 17, 2018 05:53 |
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I've heard they're similar enough that learning one makes you basically able to read the other and if I actually learned Catalan I could talk to people in Barcelona which would be cool whereas if I specifically learned Occitan I could talk to like eight people in Toulouse. It's also something I probably won't actually do so there's that to factor in. That book looks cool tho, I read a couple of Pound's translations a few days ago and found them super interesting with an incredible sound to them, then I tried the originals and yep they sound amazing even if I have no idea what they say
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# ? Mar 17, 2018 06:02 |
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If you've read The Pound Era.. my mind was blown by Hugh Kenner's analysis of how Pound translated this song (anonymous): Quan lo rossinhols escria Ab sa par la nues e•l dia, Yeu suy ab ma bell’ amia Jos las flor Tro la gaita de la tor Escria: drutz, al levar! Qu’ieu vey l’alba e•l jorn clar. When the nightingale to his mate Sings day-long and night late My love and I keep state In bower, In flower, ‘Till the watchman on the tower Cry: “Up! Thou rascal, Rise, I see the white Light And the night Flies.”
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# ? Mar 17, 2018 06:20 |
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CestMoi posted:She waited, shuddering in her room, iunno, to me it's not so hard to read "house" with a z sound at the end. In a way, that's how it looks to the eye. I think it adds to the colloquialism, the veneer of artlessness, in the poem, just as slant- and half-rhymes do in Yeats and Hardy. After all, it takes the form of a vulgar ballad, the sort that might be composed on the subject of the death of some local man, obscure to the rest of the world. Bandiet posted:If you've read The Pound Era.. my mind was blown by Hugh Kenner's analysis of how Pound translated this song (anonymous): Huh, I've never read these translations, even though I have a book that purports to collect his shorter poems (and contains his translations from Cathay)! That is a wonderful poem in itself. I'm curious to know why Kenner says his translations are particularly faithful--after all, on the surface the syllable counts don't match up line by line. I have The Pound Era, but I haven't read it. Need to. Any other highlights of that book that you can think of? Posters Delight fucked around with this message at 03:45 on Mar 18, 2018 |
# ? Mar 18, 2018 03:40 |
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Also, is anyone here into the Classical languages? I remain something of a pleb in regards to the literature, but I have read and adored a good amount of Vergil and Catullus, and while the main poo poo I've read so far in Greek is Plato, I've also enjoyed looking at Sappho, although she is necessarily very slow going. The Aeolic is almost a different language from Attic.
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# ? Mar 18, 2018 03:47 |
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I mean, it seems fairly obvious to me that "do I dare to eat a peach" resonates as a reflection on a passionless life, a worry about growing old without accomplishments, and a metaphor for sexual inadequacy. It would be a pretty bad weird poem if I couldn't tie it to a cluster of related concepts!
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# ? Mar 18, 2018 15:09 |
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According to New Criticism as my professor described it there is only one correct interpretation for each image or symbol or line in a poem. Close Reading suggests that we can deduce exactly what this is for a correct reading of a poem.
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# ? Mar 18, 2018 15:50 |
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Ccs posted:According to New Criticism as my professor described it there is only one correct interpretation for each image or symbol or line in a poem. Close Reading suggests that we can deduce exactly what this is for a correct reading of a poem. was this a professor in Being Wildly Incorrect About Terms And Their Meanings Studies
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# ? Mar 18, 2018 16:09 |
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Haha guess so. He's retired now though so I guess he just sits in his house in Princeton reading books instead of teaching students wrong things. To his credit his classes were the hardest I ever took in college because he wouldn't abide by other interpretations. Either you used the class to figure out his sensibilities so that your essays would reflect the type of interpretation he liked, or you would get marked down for not analyzing the text correctly.
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# ? Mar 18, 2018 16:32 |
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Schubert Bitch posted:Huh, I've never read these translations, even though I have a book that purports to collect his shorter poems (and contains his translations from Cathay)! That is a wonderful poem in itself. I'm curious to know why Kenner says his translations are particularly faithful--after all, on the surface the syllable counts don't match up line by line. I have The Pound Era, but I haven't read it. Need to. Any other highlights of that book that you can think of? Personae is not a complete collection, it is all the early poems that an older Pound thought worth keeping. He didn't like that translation and it was only ever published in the Little Review as far as I know. It's in the "Motz el son" chapter of The Pound Era. As for highlights, there's some on every page of that thing. It's an incredible work, perhaps what Pound's own prose would have been like if he wasn't quite so impatient. Aside from tackling Pound's whole oeuvre, there are great surveys of Gaudier-Brzeska, Wyndham Lewis, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and others throughout. He also brings in some kind of funny connections sometimes, like Buckminster Fuller and D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.
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# ? Mar 18, 2018 20:39 |
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Ccs posted:Haha guess so. He's retired now though so I guess he just sits in his house in Princeton reading books instead of teaching students wrong things. He sounds cool
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# ? Mar 18, 2018 22:45 |
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touch me with your naked hand
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# ? Mar 19, 2018 04:07 |
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touch me with your glove
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# ? Mar 19, 2018 04:10 |
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and dance me to the end of love
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# ? Mar 19, 2018 04:10 |
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Bandiet posted:Personae is not a complete collection, it is all the early poems that an older Pound thought worth keeping. He didn't like that translation and it was only ever published in the Little Review as far as I know. That's neat. I've actually never heard of Gaudier-Brzeska. That's it, I'm starting that book tonight. a man of vision posted:touch me with your naked hand a man of vision posted:touch me with your glove a man of vision posted:and dance me to the end of love thanks, vision man
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# ? Mar 19, 2018 04:54 |
let's have some good proper british poems that every red-blooded man and boy ought to appreciateInvictus, William Ernest Henley posted:Out of the night that covers me, Puck's Song, Rudyard Kipling posted:See you the ferny ride that steals
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# ? Apr 13, 2018 20:09 |
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When I was a kid I had a book called THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS that was just an extremely tory book with tips about going fishing and making a slingshot and inspirational stories from British military history and it had some poems in it and one was Invictus so now I associate it with trying to make your child Victorian. It also had Ozymandias which is a much stupider poem to have that kind of prejudice about and yet here I am
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# ? Apr 13, 2018 21:50 |
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hold on until i find my copy of vanishing lung syndrome amongst the haphazardly scattered books in my room which is a bunch of pems by a czech immunologist
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# ? Apr 14, 2018 05:12 |
love me a good pem
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# ? Apr 14, 2018 05:33 |
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Sextus Propertius From Homage to Sextus Propertius tr. Ezra Pound pre:Yet you ask on what account I write so many love-lyrics And whence this soft book comes into my mouth. Neither Calliope nor Apollo sung these things into my ear, My genius is no more than a girl. If she with ivory fingers drive a tune through the lyre, We look at the process. How easy the moving fingers; if hair is mussed on her forehead, If she goes in a gleam of Cos, in a slither of dyed stuff, There is a volume in the matter; if her eyelids sink into sleep, There are new jobs for the author; And if she plays with me with her shirt off, We shall construct many Iliads. And whatever she does or says We shall spin long yarns out of nothing. Thus much the fates have allotted me, and if, Maecenas, I were able to lead heroes into armour, I would not, Neither would I warble of Titans, nor of Ossa spiked onto Olympus,...
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# ? Apr 14, 2018 18:19 |
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here's some poems by miroslav holub that i took pics of because im lazy ft. my unkempt bed and chipping nail polish
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# ? Apr 14, 2018 20:47 |
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chernobyl kinsman posted:love me a good pem love 2 read pems
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# ? Apr 14, 2018 20:48 |
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jagstag posted:here's some poems by miroslav holub that i took pics of because im lazy ft. my unkempt bed and chipping nail polish hell yes these rule
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# ? Apr 14, 2018 21:40 |
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jagstag posted:here's some poems by miroslav holub that i took pics of because im lazy ft. my unkempt bed and chipping nail polish Bitterly disappointed these books are not covered in breadcrumbs and scrawled notes like “chekhov=gun???” m8
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# ? Apr 15, 2018 20:44 |
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My dad read me this poem when I was a kid and I always enjoyed it. I'm interested in thoughts/criticisms about it. It's opening verse is firmly etched in my memory, probably thanks the the sing-song rhythm, which was (apparently) inspired by Rudyard Kipling. Any other poems I'd like?
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# ? Apr 17, 2018 20:55 |
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Japanese dada/futurism (link to the original is at the bottom if u can read Japanese/just want to see the original form) https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/hagiwara-kyojiro-death-sentence/
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 01:08 |
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CestMoi posted:Japanese dada/futurism (link to the original is at the bottom if u can read Japanese/just want to see the original form) drat I didn't know there were japanese futurists as well, this is cool
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 01:37 |
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There was a huge Japanese dada scene and they were all insane anarchists but I can't find enough of their poo poo : (
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 14:12 |
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anarchists lit ftw
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 15:23 |
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CestMoi posted:There was a huge Japanese dada scene and they were all insane anarchists but I can't find enough of their poo poo : ( I read something that talked about futurists from places like Poland and the Czech republic once too but I got the impression that none of it had been translated.
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 20:56 |
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here's some 21st century Russian poetry so you get to see a little bit of new sincerty poets. shame no one cares to translate modern tussian poetry but i guess the interest left as soon as the cold war ended
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# ? Apr 20, 2018 21:22 |
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are you the one that posted that like 4 years ago? cos I've been reading a couple of those Voddenikov poems on that website ever since someoone on this web site linked them
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# ? Apr 21, 2018 00:02 |
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I say a couple. i've been reading the two that there are
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# ? Apr 21, 2018 00:03 |
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yeah it was me. figured no one remembered it and no one was likely to dig back 4 years worth of posts to see it so here it is again for the four posters itt
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# ? Apr 21, 2018 00:54 |
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i've been reading rimbaud, op
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# ? Apr 21, 2018 04:24 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 05:41 |
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I hope you're reading him in the intended language of his poetry, Arabic
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# ? Apr 21, 2018 22:50 |