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Poems are way cool and come in all different shapes and sizes. The one unifying factor for poetry is that every culture in the world has it and that no one ever seems to know how to teach it in school. It's also the rare form of writing that isn't dominated by dudes Some cool poems that you probably read in high school and should give another shot: -We Real Cool by Gwendolyn Brooks -Howl by Allen Ginsburg -I Sing the Body Electric by Walt Whitman -the red wheelbarrow by William Carlos Williams -Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovanni -The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot A list of influential or otherwise accessible poets to get started on: -T.S. Eliot -John Donne -Emily Dickinson -Walt Whitman -Seamus Haney -Dylan Thomas -Isaac Rosenberg -Matsuo Basho -Kobayashi Issa
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 03:54 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 06:05 |
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Robert Frost is the Thomas Kinkade of american poetry.
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 05:45 |
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Stravinsky posted:Robert Frost is the Thomas Kinkade of american poetry. He is garbage and his poo poo is only popular because it's easy to understand and broad enough to apply to anything.
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 06:01 |
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One of my favorite poets is Richard Hugo, who's hugely important in northwestern poetry. His collection "What Thou Lovest Well Remains American" is a classic. He mostly writes about small western towns, and his poems mostly focus on themes of poverty and the rural working class. A good example of his work: Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg. For more contemporary poetry with a similar American history focus, there's Gabrielle Calvocoressi. She's fairly new, but has already received several awards. Her collection The Last Time I Saw Amelia Earhart is excellent, especially "At the Adult Drive-In," a multi-part poem that appears throughout the collection. For women poets I also like Cate Marvin, especially her collection Fragment of the Head of a Queen. I don't know a whole lot else about her, I just read the collection. On the subject of women poets, I've always liked Anne Sexton, a contemporary of Sylvia Plath. I prefer her work to Plath's, but she tends to get overlooked because of Plath. Her best-known poem is "For My Lover, Returning To His Wife.
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 06:35 |
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What are peoples opinions in regards to translations of poetry. I always have been wary of anything that was not originally written in English because poetry hinges on word choice. Especially so if you have a situation where a word does not really have a companion word in the language your translating to.
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 06:40 |
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Declan MacManus posted:Poems are way cool and come in all different shapes and sizes. The one unifying factor for poetry is that every culture in the world has it and that no one ever seems to know how to teach it in school. It's also the rare form of writing that isn't dominated by dudes That list is pretty western-centric with 2 Japanese haiku guys thrown in at the end. I would add at least Pablo Neruda and Rainer Maria Rilke to the list, and maybe Cavafy and Czeslaw Milosz. Stravinsky posted:What are peoples opinions in regards to translations of poetry. I always have been wary of anything that was not originally written in English because poetry hinges on word choice. Especially so if you have a situation where a word does not really have a companion word in the language your translating to. You read a lot of world lit in fiction and I think you hit the same issues that you would there that you would in poetry. I hear this is especially true for Japanese literature where the kanji chosen can sometimes have 2 or 3 different meanings and can add layers to a passage that are not easily translated into English. I think the key is to find the right translator who can capture not only the direct translation but the spirit of the poem. Translating itself is an art form.
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 06:56 |
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Poutling posted:That list is pretty western-centric with 2 Japanese haiku guys thrown in at the end. I would add at least Pablo Neruda and Rainer Maria Rilke to the list, and maybe Cavafy and Czeslaw Milosz. That is entirely fair. In my defense, I was mostly gearing it towards Western audiences, but Neruda is a pretty gross omission on my part. Poutling posted:You read a lot of world lit in fiction and I think you hit the same issues that you would there that you would in poetry. I hear this is especially true for Japanese literature where the kanji chosen can sometimes have 2 or 3 different meanings and can add layers to a passage that are not easily translated into English. I think the key is to find the right translator who can capture not only the direct translation but the spirit of the poem. Translating itself is an art form. As long as they're not doing an Ezra Pound style hackjob I think there's artistic merit to a translation but it becomes a separate work, filtered through the eyes of a translator. Something neat I saw in a translation of Nahuatl poetry was that they included a glossary of Nahuatl terms with a few different definitions for each so that the reader was empowered to make their own translation. It would be a shame to miss out on poems written in another language, though.
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 07:03 |
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I really like Wallace Stevens. I could read Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird every day and see something new in it each time -- it's almost like a set of tarot cards, vivid images you can tease meanings out of. He's able to draw unsettling and beautiful things out of daily life, like in The Emperor of Ice Cream, though I think his diction can be a little strained at his worser moments. He was also a full-time insurance executive, which is cool.FactsAreUseless posted:I've always liked Anne Sexton, a contemporary of Sylvia Plath. I prefer her work to Plath's, but she tends to get overlooked because of Plath. Her best-known poem is "For My Lover, Returning To His Wife. Yes! Although I have to pace myself with her because her poetry is just so raw. I like A Story for Rose on the Midnight Flight to Boston Stravinsky posted:Robert Frost is the Thomas Kinkade of american poetry. Eh, I'm not his biggest fan or anything, but there's usually a bit more going on there than he's popularly given credit for. I wouldn't say Design is particularly Kinkadesque.
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 13:31 |
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Stravinsky posted:What are peoples opinions in regards to translations of poetry. I always have been wary of anything that was not originally written in English because poetry hinges on word choice. Especially so if you have a situation where a word does not really have a companion word in the language your translating to. In addition, what are peoples opinion in regards to reading poetry not in your mother language? More concrete, are there English authors/poems that are more friendly towards/readable for people who have English as second language? Seems to me there is a difference in being fluent enough that you can understand nobels compaired to being fluent enough to really understand poetry.
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 14:35 |
Stravinsky posted:What are peoples opinions in regards to translations of poetry. I always have been wary of anything that was not originally written in English because poetry hinges on word choice. Especially so if you have a situation where a word does not really have a companion word in the language your translating to. It takes a poet approximately as skilled in the "to" language as the original writer was in the "from" language. Ednay St. Vincent Millay has a lot of interesting thoughts on the subject in her introduction to her translation of Fleurs du Mal: quote:To translate poetry into prose, no matter how faithfully and even subtly the words are reproduced, is to betray the poem. To translate formal stanzas into free verse, free verse into rhymed couplets, is to fail the foreign poet in a very important way. http://hectocotylus.blogspot.com/2009/06/edna-st-vincent-millay-baudelaire.html Her translation(s) are good enough that I've had my copy of that collection deliberately stolen by a friend of mine, so that's probably a good sign. For an example from her translation, check the link here: http://fleursdumal.org/poem/129, the one listing George Dillon as author. When you compare the version keeping the original meter with the various other translations that didn't the difference is really striking. I also really like the Black Marigolds collection of translated Asian poetry by E. Powys Mathers (quoted in Steinbeck's Cannery Row; Powys Mathers is also the translator of the Mardrus and Mathers edition of the complete, four-volume Arabian Nights). Mathers was a really interesting translator who sometimes invented his original sources out of whole cloth as an excuse to sell his own poetry as coming from a foreign land, but Black Marigolds is an actual (though somewhat free) translation of the Indian Chaurapanchasika. http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/bilhana/bil01.htm Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Feb 13, 2014 |
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 15:32 |
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Walh Hara posted:In addition, what are peoples opinion in regards to reading poetry not in your mother language? More concrete, are there English authors/poems that are more friendly towards/readable for people who have English as second language? Seems to me there is a difference in being fluent enough that you can understand nobels compaired to being fluent enough to really understand poetry. It's tough because I'd say the majority of poetry relies upon cultural cues and context along with the implicit meanings of words and statements. That and the ambiguity of language informs a lot of it (and is why poetry is so difficult) and that's really hard to transcend. That being said, I think imagery translates well, so poets like Dickinson, Robert Lowell, some Stephen Crane stuff, and Sharon Olds might be a good place to start. What kind of poetry/poems are you into?
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# ? Feb 13, 2014 19:31 |
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I have always loved reading and knew I wanted to study literature since I was a teenager. I loved the classics but could never get into poetry. Although I always excelled at reading in High School I just thought I never "got" poetry. It wasn't until I took an introductory poetry class in college that I really fell in love with it. I started reading lots of Blake, Tennyson, Burns, and Wordsworth. I spent basically my entire Junior year of college writing about Philip Larkin and since my college has the largest collection of W.B. Yeats work I ended up doing a lot of research papers about him. I haven't been reading a lot lately, mostly because I'm overseas and for some reason I don't like to read poetry on my e-reader, but when I get back I think I'm going to start collecting books. I was visiting my brother-in-law's home last summer and his family has a big ranch with this guesthouse filled with antiques, and I happened upon a collection of all of Shakespeare's works in these tiny books that were published in the mid 19th century and I've been hounding him about letting me buy them. I think the most important advice I ever got was from my intro poetry professor who suggested that I only read poetry in quiet, private places so that I am able to read it out loud. That single piece of advice made all the difference between enjoying poetry and just reading it because it was assigned.
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# ? Feb 14, 2014 10:51 |
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Poetry is all about the rhythm. I recommend going to a poetry reading (as dull as that might sound on paper) just to get a feel for the breadth of cadences possible in verse. Most song lyrics would be pretty dumb if you only ever read them on a page (although many of them are still very dumb).
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# ? Feb 17, 2014 05:18 |
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Stravinsky posted:What are peoples opinions in regards to translations of poetry. I always have been wary of anything that was not originally written in English because poetry hinges on word choice. Especially so if you have a situation where a word does not really have a companion word in the language your translating to. It depends on the kind of poetry I suppose. How simple or contrived the form is, etc. Didactic poetry loses a lot of its charm, but a lot of ecstatic poetry I think holds up really well, in part because its more about the image and the ecstatic feeling than imparting a message in an aesthetically pleasing way. I tend to agree with you on the issue of word choice, and so the super literary poetry that depends on language from a higher register and dense allusions is naturally going to translate poorly, but some forms of poetry go out of their way to emphasize simple language and concrete imagery. I think Haiku translates well for this reason, as the whole culture of it tends towards simplicity. Ghazals can also be effective in this regard, since the format has the potential to be so succinct and more encapsulated that it naturally leaves less space for confusion. Yiggy fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Feb 17, 2014 |
# ? Feb 17, 2014 07:21 |
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Sharkie posted:Eh, I'm not his biggest fan or anything, but there's usually a bit more going on there than he's popularly given credit for. I wouldn't say Design is particularly Kinkadesque. I decided maybe I have not given Mr. Frost his fair shake, so I bought a small collection of some of his poems. It is The Road Not Taken and Other Poems put out by Dover Thrift Editions. If you wanted to join me on my journey of rediscovering and finding out why Frost is a considered a darling of American poetry you can buy it here from Amazon. I just got my copy in today so expect some insightful commentary on it soon! Stravinsky fucked around with this message at 18:40 on Feb 17, 2014 |
# ? Feb 17, 2014 18:35 |
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I just could not wait and dove right on in! As we can see in my picture below, the first poem is the well known The Road Not Taken. Here we can see Frost's mastery of the english words in conveying a very simple image and storyline. Even though it is super simple most peopple gently caress this poem up. Key lines include: Then took the other, as just as fair And both that morning equally lay In leaves no step had trodden black. I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: and took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference. Most people read this and just go, oh he chose the one most have not chosen and it really affected him in a philosophical way. Those people did not really read the poem very closely at all. Look at the lines I picked out. He clearly states that both were the same and just as trodden upon as the other. What he is saying is that he will lie later on in life and say that he took the road (an actual or metaphoricle) most people have not taken and how it directly changed him. Once again we can really say that Frost is a true poet worthy to be read again and again.
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# ? Feb 17, 2014 18:57 |
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One more before I run off. Sorry for the mess, I needed to eat something before heading off and well you know what the say: Time is money. Here we have Old Man's Winter Night, Patch Of Old Snow , and In The Home Stretch. Old Man's Winter Night deals in themes of isolation and death. The old man goes about his house not remembering why he is doing so and even worse not even remembering who he was! He eventually goes outside, looks at the moon and decides he was a light for no one but himself. He accepts his isolation and attempts sleep. One can easily imply that the old man dies in his sleep. Frost talks about how no one can fill anyplace (house,countryside, etc.) on thier own thus driving home the theme of isolation. Poor old man. Patch of Old Snow is about a patch of old snow. A perfect picture of it, you can almost see it in ones own mind. I got shivers thinking about trying to reach out my hand and touching it. In The Home Stretch. Ever felt not at home in your own home? This starts with a women(!possible feminism trigger warning you guys!) who is pretty unhappy about where she is at that point of time. She imagines washing dish after dish as she grows old and withers away. She moved with her husband to the country and it does not feel like hom to her. She does not admit that she is unhappy with the house. The husband is also slightly apprehensive about thier new home. The look for little ways to feel better, like pointing out how the stove fits just so snuggly. In the end the feel isolated and abandoned in the wilderness left to thier fate. But its not an ending nor is it a begginning for them, but rather as the wife has put it, there are only middles. Really makes you think.
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# ? Feb 17, 2014 21:10 |
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Stravinsky posted:I just could not wait and dove right on in! Lol.
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# ? Feb 18, 2014 00:33 |
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Re; translations, I read The Conference of the Birds by Farid Attar pretty recently and while it was really good and had some great footnotes explaining every cultural/religious reference, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was just missing something by not being a 12th century Persian Sufi mystic. It just loses a lot of the punch that really great poems have when you are separated by however many degrees from the actual circumstances the poem was written in.
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# ? Feb 18, 2014 00:38 |
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I spent a semester translating Beowulf, and came away with tremendous respect for the folks who undertake such things. I haven't seen a translation that really captures the feeling of the Old English, though I do like Seamus Heaney's version. Cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter has written a number of interesting pieces on translation. I haven't yet read Le Ton beau de Marot, which explicitly deals with the translation of poetry, but several of his other books examine the subject as well. In Surfaces and Essences, his recent work on analogy, Hofstadter contends that translation can't be a purely mechanical exercise because of the fundamental differences in the mechanics of languages. Everyday phrases in one language may have no counterpart in another, so a certain degree of creativity is necessary to fill in the gaps with analogous constructs.
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# ? Feb 18, 2014 01:07 |
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I haven't read Farid Attar yet, but generally Sufi poetry is almost always playing on the same theme of separation and longing for unity with God/the Absolute/insert your own metaphor. Specifically an imminent conception of the divine, rather than a personality bearing, transcendent conception of God standing aside and above us. Conceptually understanding this doesn't necessarily impart a visceral feel and ear for it. That said, if you're interested in digging into that kind of stuff some more it can help to read that sort of poetry in other contexts as it pops up again and again in many different cultures. In truth, while the Sufis are among the best at that kind of poetry, they're really drawing from a much longer tradition pouring out of Indian culture and religion, which leaked heavily into Sufi thought and mysticism. They perfected the genre, arguably, but they didn't create it. That said, a common way to wander into a deeper feeling and understanding of what they're getting at is to explore the more abstract, higher spiritual meanings through the more mundane metaphor it is generally expressed through: the relationship between two lovers. If you want to stick to Sufi's, Rumi is great for this. As I said though, sometimes it helps to get to the same place from different cultures. The much more modern Rabindranath Tagore explores these themes heavily in his own poetry and in the poetry of other great bhakti poets such as Kabir, which he has done some translations of. In Indian culture, this theme is characterized in the arts as a type of feeling that they're trying to evoke, which they call the Sringara Rasa. Tagore as translated by W.B. Yeats posted:From Gitanjali To come even closer to home culturally speaking, you can find this kind of poetry in the West though it tends to be less common and falls quite a bit short of the standard Sufis set. It works in some Christian contexts but not in others, where there is a stronger resistance to imminent conceptions of the divine. The transcendentalists tried to play on these themes, but some of them were pretty bad at it. Dickinson went to this place a lot in her poetry. Another that I really like though was Jones Very, who had an intense period writing this sort of stuff before his inner light went out, so to speak. Jones Very posted:
For my money though its hard to beat Rumi, Sufi poet par excellence. His range extends to exploring this through the seemingly ultra mundane situation of spurned love and separated lovers... Rumi posted:Every day, this pain. Either you're numb To a higher register exploration of unity with an imminent divine... Rumi posted:You come closer, though you never left.
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# ? Feb 18, 2014 01:32 |
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Stravinsky posted:Patch of Old Snow is about a patch of old snow. A perfect picture of it, you can almost see it in ones own mind. I got shivers thinking about trying to reach out my hand and touching it. I know this is sarcasm, but your criticism seems to be "this poem just describes a thing" so I guess you're just not a fan of Imagism. For what it's worth, the text of the poem is: A Patch of Old Snow There's a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have guessed Was a blow-away paper the rain Had brought to rest. It is speckled with grime as if Small print overspread it, The news of a day I've forgotten -- If I ever read it. And I don't think you need to be a professional critic to see, as I said, "there's... a bit more going on there." The poem isn't "about" a patch of snow, it's about not recognizing the value of something until after it's been destroyed. The grime, and the fact that the snow is just a "patch," is what brings his attention to the snow. But this grime is the "small print" that makes it resemble a newspaper, bringing "news of a day" the speaker has forgotten, or perhaps not even read -- the grime is what makes it "readable" as a metaphorical object. What day could this be referring to? Perhaps the time in which the snow covered everything...which the speaker doesn't describe, perhaps because he didn't notice it (read it)? The speaker only seems to notice the snow when it's mostly gone and ruined. Like I said, I'm not his biggest fan, and I'm not claiming this is some revelatory masterpiece, but I don't think my judgement was particularly controversial, either. Sharkie fucked around with this message at 01:49 on Feb 18, 2014 |
# ? Feb 18, 2014 01:45 |
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Poutling posted:I think the key is to find the right translator who can capture not only the direct translation but the spirit of the poem. Translating itself is an art form.
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# ? Feb 18, 2014 01:59 |
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Sharkie posted:I know this is sarcasm, but your criticism seems to be "this poem just describes a thing" so I guess you're just not a fan of Imagism. For what it's worth, the text of the poem is: I am never sarcastic nor do I joke. Thank you for your insight into this one. I never once pondered upon the transmutable and temporal nature that is easily observable in nature. I really hope you will follow along with me and help guide me when I stray as I rediscover Robert Frost. And boy am I glad your here because I need some help with the next section.
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# ? Feb 18, 2014 03:14 |
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I had a hard time understanding these two so I went through them and made some notes. This way I could pick them apart piece by piece and really dig deep into Frost's works here. I could be a little off base so if anyone who has a better grasp on Mr. Frost's complex works could please let me know just where I strayed I would be very thankful. Thank you in gameboyadvanced!
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# ? Feb 18, 2014 03:16 |
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In other poetry news, I also read former New Jersey poet laureate and also former living person Amiri Baraka. While he is no Robert Frost, I really do appreciate Baraka's in your face confrontational attitude. The fact that he was even made a poet laureate for any place is amazing in and of itself and I am really not surprised that some people were a little uneasy about that. Stravinsky fucked around with this message at 03:28 on Feb 18, 2014 |
# ? Feb 18, 2014 03:25 |
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:John Ashbery's translations of Rimbaud are absolutely wonderful. I never really understood Illuminations until I saw what Ashbery did with it. It takes a great poet to translate great poetry. Do you like Ashberry's own poems? I also really like his translation of Illuminations but don't know where to start with his poetry, though it seems like I'd be interested in it.
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# ? Feb 18, 2014 03:25 |
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Sharkie posted:Do you like Ashberry's own poems? I also really like his translation of Illuminations but don't know where to start with his poetry, though it seems like I'd be interested in it. I think that's why he's so controversial: a lot of people have only done surface readings and think it's pretentious crap.
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# ? Feb 18, 2014 07:56 |
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I like the one where he lists rivers.
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# ? Feb 18, 2014 13:30 |
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CestMoi posted:Re; translations, I read The Conference of the Birds by Farid Attar pretty recently and while it was really good and had some great footnotes explaining every cultural/religious reference, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was just missing something by not being a 12th century Persian Sufi mystic. It just loses a lot of the punch that really great poems have when you are separated by however many degrees from the actual circumstances the poem was written in. Who's translation/copy did you read? I have this on my poo poo to read list and I figure the more footnotes and explanations I get the better because I'm not a whirling dervish.
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# ? Feb 19, 2014 04:51 |
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Stravinsky posted:Who's translation/copy did you read? I have this on my poo poo to read list and I figure the more footnotes and explanations I get the better because I'm not a whirling dervish. I went for the Penguin Classics version. It has footnotes explaining all the references and puns you wouldn't pick up on not being Persian and also has a section at the back with paragraph biographies of everyone namedropped throughout the poem. It's actually a pretty good way to pick up some really basic knowledge of Islam if you don't have any already.
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# ? Feb 19, 2014 14:29 |
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Juaguocio posted:I spent a semester translating Beowulf, and came away with tremendous respect for the folks who undertake such things. I haven't seen a translation that really captures the feeling of the Old English, though I do like Seamus Heaney's version. I don't read Old English so well but I do go in for Middle English Poetry and I am fascinated by the choices modern translators make. I am deeply fond of a poem called Pearl, it's about intense grief, a crisis of faith and the gradual acceptance of suffering. It's highly alliterative and when read out loud it's like somebody banging an anguished fist on your chest. I playned my perle þat þer watz penned Wyth fyrce skyllez þat faste faȝt. Þaȝ kynde of Krist me comfort kenned, My wreched wylle in wo ay wraȝte. I felle vpon þat floury flaȝt, Suche odour to my hernez schot; I slode vpon a slepyng-slaȝte On þat precious perle withouten spot. If I had to choose I would say my favourite modern translation is by Jane Draycott. Caught in the chill grasp of grief I stood in that place clasping my hands, seized by the grip on my heart of longing and loss. Though reason told me to be still I mourned for my poor imprisoned pearl with all the fury and force of a quarrel. The comfort of Christ called out to me but still I wrestled in wilful sorrow. Then the power and perfume of those flowers filled up my head and felled me, slipped me into sudden sleep in the place where she lay beneath me. My girl. She communicates sadness and suffering well, but for me she cannot capture the fury nor the desperation so apparent in the original Middle English. I can totally see how she is consciously putting forward the alliteration, but it seems so wishy washy. I also think she goes on a bit too much, in the Middle English the poet gives vent to a sudden outburst, whereas the modern translation goes on way too long. The thing is, I can point out where a modern translation doesn't quite get it right for me, but hell, I'll be damned if I can imagine a better way to do it!
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# ? Feb 20, 2014 16:13 |
Yeah, I was thinking about posting some Old English poetry but it seemed like the thread was trending more modern. I absolutely *love* that stuff. It's not too hard to teach yourself the pronunciations -- it takes a few weeks of practice and study but it's not anywhere near as utterly alien as it appears when you first look at a pagefull of "hwaet"'s. The anglo-saxon poets paid attention to the sound of what they were saying in a way modern poetry tends to drift away from.
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# ? Feb 20, 2014 16:23 |
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Yes, totally! I always read out loud when I come to Middle English, it's just to cool not to. My mum is Scottish but I was raised in England, however, when I read ME poetry I sound super Scottish. Old English is totally on my 'to do' list. I have a book called From Old English to Standard English which was recommended to me as a good teach yourself guide, but what I actually need to do is sit down and actually read some OE. I don't suppose you OE types can recommend some good introductory poetry?
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# ? Feb 20, 2014 16:43 |
There's only so much of it. There's The Wanderer, Caedmon's Hymn, and Beowulf and a few other scraps, mostly biblical. The Boethius translation, I suppose? That's one reason it's so easy to learn -- you can read all of it in a few weeks of dedicated study, with time to practice pronunciation while you read. I haven't actually read the Pearl Poet but my understanding is it's far closer to old English than, say, Chaucer is, just because Chaucer happened to be writing in the London dialect that modern standardized English was mostly heavily influenced by. As far as actually learning OE, the textbook I & my wife both used was Millward's Biography of the English Language and it was a useful introduction but it still might be hard to get the "ear" for the pronunciations right without actually listening to some recordings. It's useful for learning what the old-style letters correspond to and so forth though. Once you figure out what the letters stand for, reading the stuff is no harder than piecing together a latin passage out of modern roots, and from there the next step is getting the sound right. I mean, you won't turn yourself into the next Tolkien or anything but it's not hard to get enough for a basic appreciation. Hieronymous Alloy fucked around with this message at 18:46 on Feb 20, 2014 |
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# ? Feb 20, 2014 18:28 |
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Stravinsky posted:In other poetry news, I also read former New Jersey poet laureate and also former living person Amiri Baraka. While he is no Robert Frost, I really do appreciate Baraka's in your face confrontational attitude. The fact that he was even made a poet laureate for any place is amazing in and of itself and I am really not surprised that some people were a little uneasy about that. PYF Poet Laureates quote:Cherrylog Road Kind of reminds me of Eugenides for some reason but not in a good way
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# ? Feb 21, 2014 01:00 |
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Dr Scoofles posted:Yes, totally! I always read out loud when I come to Middle English, it's just to cool not to. My mum is Scottish but I was raised in England, however, when I read ME poetry I sound super Scottish. Old English is totally on my 'to do' list. I have a book called From Old English to Standard English which was recommended to me as a good teach yourself guide, but what I actually need to do is sit down and actually read some OE. I don't suppose you OE types can recommend some good introductory poetry? quote:Ic eom wunderlicu wiht, wifum on hyhte quote:(I am a wondrous creature, a joy to women, The introductory OE class that I took used Hasenfratz and Jambeck's Reading Old English as its text, which I've since learned is riddled with errors. The method it uses for teaching OE grammar is much friendlier than the more scholarly works, however, so it could still be a useful book when cross-referenced with a more comprehensive book like Mitchell and Robinson's Guide To Old English or Klaeber's Beowulf.
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# ? Feb 22, 2014 01:59 |
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Juaguocio posted:The Exeter Book riddles are a nice introduction. They're short little verses of the "what am I?" variety, whose intended answers range from mundane objects to hilarious double entendres: Haha, very cool! Thanks for the recommendations. The nice thing is some of the Old English there is familiar, I guess Middle English is gateway poetry to the hard stiff!
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# ? Feb 23, 2014 08:14 |
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I got some T.S Eliot poems because I'd never read them before and The Wasteland is pretty drat deece. I'm now trying to overcome my gag reflex against writing in books so I can write down all the cool things I like and look fun and interesting in coffee shops.
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# ? Feb 23, 2014 17:28 |
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# ? Jun 5, 2024 06:05 |
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CestMoi posted:I got some T.S Eliot poems because I'd never read them before and The Wasteland is pretty drat deece. I'm now trying to overcome my gag reflex against writing in books so I can write down all the cool things I like and look fun and interesting in coffee shops. I have a lot of sperg book nerd friends that will buy two copies of a text: one for marking up and one for leaving pristine.
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# ? Feb 24, 2014 01:24 |