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Thread: the most recent poem you have read

  1. #16
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    great
    are you able to transfer it to English do you think?
    or maybe just give an idea of what it is saying.
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  2. #17
    Registered User Poetaster's Avatar
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    I have translated it, I don't want to post my translation in case I want to try and publish it at some point and I'm not sure about the legalities. Basically it's a poem dedicated Catullus's friend Cornallus, a man who wrote a history of the world in three scrolls of papyrus (which in some translations is phrased as a light hearted joke).

    The first two lines 'Cui dono lepidum novum libellum / arida modo pumice expolitum?' are essentially 'To whom do I dedicate this new book, all flattened out with pumice to a finished product?' and then it goes on to 'Corneli, tibi: namque tu solebas / meas esse aliquid putare nugas'. This is essentially 'To you, Cornelius, because you always liked my awful poems' - the word 'nugas' at the end of line four means essentially rubbish or waste. Catullus then goes on to flatter his friend, pointing out his history of the world was 'Doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis!' or 'Academic/Scollarly, by Jupiter, and laborious/was hard work', and saying Cornelius was the first Italian to do it, as Greek poets had wrote a history of the world even before Rome became a credible force. Having praised his friend Cornelius and justified his own poem, Catullus goes on to the self-depreciating note again:

    'Quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli—
    qualecumque, quod, o patrona virgo,
    plus uno maneat perenne saeclo!

    Essentially 'So whatever this book is, and whatever poems are found within it, may they survive protected by the Virgin and last into the next age' also hinting that their author considers the poems unworthy. I'm paraphrasing, and there is no substitute for reading it in the Latin. The rhythm of the Latin is wonderful.
    Last edited by Poetaster; 05-04-2014 at 08:31 AM.
    'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
    we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'

  3. #18
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Oh this a little not clear yet for me.
    the author of the poem is self depreciating and yet dedicating to a friend?
    in other words he writes a poem but then think it is unworthy?
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  4. #19
    Registered User Poetaster's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cacian View Post
    Oh this a little not clear yet for me.
    the author of the poem is self depreciating and yet dedicating to a friend?
    in other words he writes a poem but then think it is unworthy?
    Catullus loved paradoxes. This going between self-depreciation and praising a friend is the source of most of the poem's humour.
    'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
    we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'

  5. #20
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poetaster View Post
    Catullus loved paradoxes. This going between self-depreciation and praising a friend is the source of most of the poem's humour.
    I gather it is about the history of the world. is he saying his predictions are false?
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  6. #21
    Registered User Poetaster's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by cacian View Post
    I gather it is about the history of the world. is he saying his predictions are false?
    I don't know. I think that might be the point, however.
    'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
    we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'

  7. #22
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poetaster View Post
    I don't know. I think that might be the point, however.
    interesting. how come you are so well read with Latin?
    Last edited by cacian; 05-03-2014 at 05:17 PM.
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  8. #23
    confidentially pleased cacian's Avatar
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    my next recent poem I have read is by Thomas Hood

    silence

    here is a silence where hath been no sound,
    here is a silence where no sound may be,
    in the cold grave—under the deep deep sea,
    or in wide desert where no life is found,
    which hath been mute, and still must sleep profound;
    no voice is hush’d—no life treads silently,
    but clouds and cloudy shadows wander free.
    that never spoke, over the idle ground:
    but in green ruins, in the desolate walls
    of antique palaces, where Man hath been,
    though the dun fox, or wild hyæna, calls,
    and owls, that flit continually between,
    shriek to the echo, and the low winds moan,—
    there the true Silence is, self-conscious and alone.
    it may never try
    but when it does it sigh
    it is just that
    good
    it fly

  9. #24
    Maybe YesNo's Avatar
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    I like the "self-conscious" part of the last line of Thomas Hood's poem.

    Regarding poetaster's translation of Catallus, the difficult part of poetry translation is to get the sound translated in some way. I suspect, but don't really know, that the sound of a Japanese haiku, for example, feels different in Japanese than one written in English. This is one of the reasons I don't see much point in writing a haiku in English. Might as well stick to common meter. What I would like to hear in the original is how it sounds and understand why that sound is attractive to the listener of the native language. The translation just helps me understand what was being said.

    Do you read other poetry journals besides American Poetry Review, MorpheusSandman? I picked up Rattle at a bookstore for the first time last weekend looking for something different to read. I also picked up a copy of passager.

    Being "half in love with pain", in the Edward Thomas poem was unusual.

    I signed up for Rattle's past poetry sent out every now and then to my email. I read yesterday Martha Clarkson's "How She Described Her Ex-Husband". Her description was unflattering toward him, as would be expected, and somewhat humorous.

  10. #25
    Registered User Poetaster's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    Regarding poetaster's translation of Catallus, the difficult part of poetry translation is to get the sound translated in some way. I suspect, but don't really know, that the sound of a Japanese haiku, for example, feels different in Japanese than one written in English. This is one of the reasons I don't see much point in writing a haiku in English. Might as well stick to common meter. What I would like to hear in the original is how it sounds and understand why that sound is attractive to the listener of the native language. The translation just helps me understand what was being said.
    It's the hardest part of translating - especially considering that Catullus 1 is in a Hendecasyllabic meter, which is very hard to keep constant and accurate to a language like Latin in English. To be honest, I don't try to replicate the rhythm and line-length of the original unless I'm positive I can do it well, and that's not often at all.
    'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
    we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'

  11. #26
    King of Dreams MorpheusSandman's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    I suspect, but don't really know, that the sound of a Japanese haiku, for example, feels different in Japanese than one written in English. This is one of the reasons I don't see much point in writing a haiku in English.
    Agree on both points. One key difference in the sound of each is that Japanese is a mora-timed language and English is a stress-timed language: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isochrony Japanese is also far more compressed and implicit, which means you can say/suggest a lot with very little. This is why in English I prefer cinquains (or my sesnets) to Haiku, as the additional lines and line-breaks are needed, I think, in English to gain the kind of implicit, elliptical, suggestive density of a Japanese Haiku.

    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    Do you read other poetry journals besides American Poetry Review, MorpheusSandman?
    Yes, quite a few, actually: Poetry, APR, Rattle, Tar River Poetry, Poetry East, and Southern Poetry Review in print; and Field, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, and Five Points in digital via LitRagger (except Kenyon Review, which is via Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/The-Kenyon-Rev...dp/B007D43RJW/

    I pretty much read them whenever I have to go anywhere where there's a wait; bathroom, doctor's office, etc. Rattle is certainly one of the more accessible journals, as they tend to shy away from avante-garde stuff and accept a lot of narrative poetry. I particularly liked a poem called The Hole by Bill Christophersen from #40:
    Bill Christophersen
    HOLE
    I

    When the toddler disappeared (the septic tank’s
    countersunk manhole cover not quite centered
    and so become a revolving door), the May
    sun was drying the grass of the bed-and-breakfast’s
    manicured front lawn. A gardener
    was coaxing a power mower up the property’s
    street-side incline, one hand on the throttle,
    the other on the driving wheel’s black dish.

    When the father disappeared (down the same hole,
    self-preservation trumped by something else
    more limbic still, some gut-level imperative
    or sense that hell had got him by the balls,
    no matter how he played it), the mother, alone
    and shaking, screamed with her whole body.
    The gardener jammed the stick in park and hove
    his lumbering, sweating self from the metal seat.

    Then the mother disappeared (belayed
    by the gardener’s sausage fingers round her ankles,
    arms flailing the stinking darkness; flailing
    and groping, the acrid stench suffocating
    as her terror of the epiphany that life,
    into which we bring these ones we love,
    can snatch them by the toe and eat them whole;
    can leach their little hides, do what we will).

    Then the child reappeared (hauled up bodily,
    the mother, arms extended like a midwife’s,
    seizing it in midair from the father,
    who, plunging deep, had gone to work, feeling
    past turds till hand touched skull, then tugged
    the curled-up infant from the pissy muck
    and raised it above his head, a living trophy
    delivered to its mother, then babe and mom delivered

    by the puffing gardener, whose yells of “Help! Baby!”
    brought a passing mom-and-stroller, hence clean
    water, disinfectant wipes, cell phone and the steady
    voice required to summon 911).
    Below, the father, treading bilious sludge,
    barked knuckles on cement, then struck a rung
    egress from that twilight zone of filth;
    chimney to pure light, sun-drenched salvation.

    And so the father reappeared (climbing
    out of deeper **** than I or anyone
    I know has ever been encompassed by).
    One doesn’t think, they say, at times like this;
    one reacts. One thinks all sorts of things: How deep?
    Well? Cesspool? Caustic chemicals? Will I
    land on him? Break his back? My back? Is he
    dead already? Am I committing suicide?

    The ambulance arrived in a minute-thirty.
    Son and father had stomachs pumped, got meds,
    caught colds, got better. All three wake up screaming
    more often than most of us. The parents shower
    way more than they need to. The two-year-old
    climbs the walls at the mention of bath time but
    otherwise is doing fine. Turns out babies
    hold their breath instinctively under water.


    II

    One wants the tale to end there, and perhaps
    it does, a centerpiece of family lore, a
    miracle of love, bravery, a special
    dispensation all three share going forward.
    But perhaps the enormity of the episode,
    like a dark star, warps the space around it,
    and the debt of love incurred toward the father
    smothers the wife, and later the child, in guilt.

    Perhaps the father, a dozen or more years later,
    watching his teenage son do reckless things,
    thinks, “What right’s he got to pull this kind
    of **** on me?” Or, seething at the wife’s
    obiter dicta and bickering retorts,
    thinks, “Why was it up to me to take the plunge?
    Was my life more expendable than yours?”
    Perhaps the boy, unable at last to abide

    the horror of that day, its happy ending
    notwithstanding, loses the knack for trust,
    without which nothing much is ever ventured,
    fought for, wrestled with, maintained in spite
    of obstacles? Perhaps no foothold ever
    fully persuades; no morning sun on green
    lawn but signifies some nightmare’s miseen-
    scène; no darkness seems negotiable.


    III

    A miracle is deceptive. Isolated,
    it can make all history seem foreordained,
    as if the jeweled part stands for the whole
    bloody mess, that far less scintillating
    prospect. There’s the chance, of course, that life’s
    a latticework, a series of intersecting
    miracles or miracle plays whose characters
    appear/disappear within the larger structure,

    a glimpse of which we’re occasionally afforded:
    no clockwork universe but one ably directed
    by the playwright himself, who, understandably
    perhaps, bends over backward to retain
    his privacy, anonymity, invisibility,
    though peering, now and then, from a wing to nod
    or appearing, like Alfred Hitchcock, in a cameo
    as grandfather, gardener, deus ex machina.

    A tempting proposition, this invisible
    script, this hidden teleology
    in which each of us plays an unwitting part.
    But over and against it is the hole
    unspeakable; mephitic; defiling;
    predatory, one almost wants to say;
    lying there beneath resplendent grass
    on which young couples and their babies play.
    "As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light of meaning in the darkness of mere being." --Carl Gustav Jung

    "To absent friends, lost loves, old gods, and the season of mists; and may each and every one of us always give the devil his due." --Neil Gaiman; The Sandman Vol. 4: Season of Mists

    "I'm on my way, from misery to happiness today. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh" --The Proclaimers

  12. #27
    Maybe YesNo's Avatar
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    That was a nice poem by Bill Christopherson. Rattle does seem accessible from what I have read so far, MorheusSandman, and I will probably start a subscription. I'll look into the others you mentioned as well.

    Sometimes translated poems, poetaster, come with the original and the translation on facing pages. With current technology, it should be possible to provide an audio version of at least the original. That may not be enough to get a sense of the pleasure the original provided, but it should help.

  13. #28
    Registered User Poetaster's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by YesNo View Post
    Sometimes translated poems, poetaster, come with the original and the translation on facing pages. With current technology, it should be possible to provide an audio version of at least the original. That may not be enough to get a sense of the pleasure the original provided, but it should help.
    That's right. The Guy Lee translations of Catullus and Virgil are how I learned Latin actually, I highly recommend them exactly because they also provide the original Latin text.
    'So - this is where we stand. Win all, lose all,
    we have come to this: the crisis of our lives'

  14. #29
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    I'm not sure if epic poems fall within this thread, but I just read The Aeneid. Honest opinion? I didn't care for it. I felt that besides being a propaganda piece in part, which I honestly don't care about, it copies much from The Iliad and The Odyssey, but doesn't do it as well, nor does it have an equivalently epic feel to it in comparison to Homer's works. I also did not care for the similes used, while in Homer's I thought they were phenomenal. I also felt like The Iliad and The Odyssey spoke to me, and what it spoke was true, whereas I felt Virgil's work lacked a certain level of authenticity in its themes.

    I admit to reading it in a modern translation, that of Robert Fagles, and that though I loved his translations of Homer, feel that I might have been better served reading the Allen Mandelbaum or Robert Fitzgerald translations. I spoke with a professor of mine today and voiced my opinions. He somewhat agreed with my opinions, but felt that what I was really missing was the oratory effect from hearing the poem in its original Latin, having himself read in its original form.

    Now I have done some minor research into translations and have done a few comparisons of different works, and definitely can see how different translators can make the same work feel different, but it definitely seems like some works are more prone to this loss of effect from the translation process than others, and that The Aeneid falls into this category.

    Personally, I feel The Iliad and The Odyssey are on another level over The Aeneid. I also felt that Paradise Lost, while not as great as Homer's works, imo, was also fantastic and worth reading again in the future. I'm not sure I can see myself reading The Aeneid again. I don't plan to learn Latin just to read it, so I admit that I may be confining myself to an opinion lacking the best possible presentation to base judgement off of.

  15. #30
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    The Oxford Guide to Literature in Translation has a long section on Virgil's Aeneid which damns all modern translations with faint praise, and recommends Dryden. In fact, I've never seen a translation praised so highly in the OGLT! Dryden himself thought he'd captured Virgil's 'magnificence', and Walter Scott agreed with him.

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