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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: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 |
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Feb 18, 2014 01:45
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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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