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Thread: Favorite Modern/Living/Non-English Poet

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    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    Favorite Modern/Living/Non-English Poet

    OK... there seems to be this frequent assumption that those who cite an older poem and poet (and especially one written in English) as their favorite, are either clueless or dismissive of anything more contemporary... or by a non-Anglo poet. So here's your chance to prove them wrong.

    Share with us, if you will, who is:

    1. Your favorite 20th century poet

    2. Your favorite 20th century poem

    3. Your favorite living poet

    4. Your favorite poem by a living poet

    5. Your favorite non-Anglo poet

    6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem
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    Well, I can only answer 1 and 2, as I'm not familiar with enough poetry to answer the rest. So 1 would be Yeats, and 2 would be "The Second Coming."

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    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    No answer yet. Perhaps it proves that LitNetters don't read "outside the box" of old Anglo-poets... or it proves JBI's assertion that most LitNetters simply don't read poetry.
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    Bibliophile JBI's Avatar
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    Favorite 20th century poet, well, maybe Montale, that is who comes to my mind right now.

    Favorite 20th century poem, maybe 死水 by Wen Yiduo, or perhaps something by Bialik. Definately This is to Say by W. C. Williams if we include English poems.

    Favorite living poet, well, this is difficult because there are so many. Right now, Wilbur comes to mind first, but if you want a non-English one, maybe Xi Murong.

    Favorite poem by a living poet is probably Autobiography of Red, but if you want a shorter one, maybe O Cadoiro by Erin Moure, which is a mix of medieval Galician and idiosyncratic English.

    Favorite non-Anglo poet, well probably Li Yu, Or perhaps Li Bo. Ibn Gabriel is also a favorite poet of mine.

    Favorite Non-English poem, well, probably this one http://www.chinese-poems.com/y9.html The translation is absolute crap though, and without the background it is impossible to get the essence of it, with the paralleled allusions and evasive suggestions. They even axed the real title from it.

    Edit, and of course, the immortal Teresa Teng singing it, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2P2AUcqL50U

    I like this one by Li He also, http://books.google.ca/books?id=EB1n...i%20he&f=false. Again, not a perfect translation, as it seems to localize the poem more, whereas the Chinese seems to keep the poet blurry within the poem, which makes its engagement with war and history more universal and less personal. Still, Li He is perhaps the most difficult poet to translate I have ever encountered.
    Last edited by JBI; 05-24-2012 at 07:39 PM.

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    Registered User Polednice's Avatar
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    Stlukes! Peek a boo!

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    Registered User Polednice's Avatar
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    Ahem, forgiving my outburst, to the actual question:

    1. I must shamefully admit that my knowledge of 20th century poetry is rather slim, so I cannot profess a fully reasoned opinion, but I have recently loved reading the poetry of Edwin Morgan.

    2. Couldn't answer this for any period.

    3. Again my experience is thin on the ground. I think John Burnside is interesting, and I came across a young poet in Poetry Review called Isabel Galleymore who wrote something wonderful, but I couldn't claim a favourite yet.

    4. Same as 2.

    5. Does non-Anglo mean non-British (i.e. American allowed), or are we being stricter? If strict, I suppose I'd have to be cliché and go with Baudelaire.

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    Quote Originally Posted by stlukesguild View Post
    OK... there seems to be this frequent assumption that those who cite an older poem and poet (and especially one written in English) as their favorite, are either clueless or dismissive of anything more contemporary... or by a non-Anglo poet. So here's your chance to prove them wrong.

    Share with us, if you will, who is:

    1. Your favorite 20th century poet

    2. Your favorite 20th century poem

    3. Your favorite living poet

    4. Your favorite poem by a living poet

    5. Your favorite non-Anglo poet

    6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem

    This is actually a good "what is your favorite thread" I am in.



    1. Your favorite 20th century poet


    Had you asked me 2 months ago I would have said Ezra Pound. But right now my favorite is giuseppe ungaretti, he lead an extraordinary life and was one of the few masters of modernist verse. The stuff is simply beautiful and unique - the last century focused heavily on the latter but he was one of the few who also never forgot the former.

    2. Your favorite 20th century poem

    Autumn

    Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
    Lay your shadow on the sundials
    and let loose the wind in the fields.

    Bid the last fruits to be full;
    give them another two more southerly days,
    press them to ripeness, and chase
    the last sweetness into the heavy wine.

    Whoever has no house now will not build one
    anymore.
    Whoever is alone now will remain so for a long
    time,
    will stay up, read, write long letters,
    and wander the avenues, up and down,
    restlessly, while the leaves are blowing.

    - Maria Rainer Rilke


    3. Your favorite living poet

    This is more difficult as I don't enjoy most contemporary poetry. There is a strong part of me which would wish to say Bob Dylan, but I shall say Seamus Heaney instead. I have always admired his harmony.


    4. Your favorite poem by a living poet

    For John Clare


    Kind of empty in the way it sees everything, the earth gets to its feet and
    salutes the sky. More of a success at it this time than most
    others it is. The feeling that the sky might be in the back of someone's
    mind. Then there is no telling how many there are. They grace
    everything--bush and tree--to take the roisterer's mind off his
    caroling--so it's like a smooth switch back. To what was aired in
    their previous conniption fit. There is so much to be seen everywhere
    that it's like not getting used to it, only there is so much it
    never feels new, never any different. You are standing looking at that
    building and you cannot take it all in, certain details are already hazy
    and the mind boggles. What will it all be like in five years' time
    when you try to remember? Will there have been boards in between the
    grass part and the edge of the street? As long as that couple is
    stopping to look in that window over there we cannot go. We feel like
    they have to tell us we can, but they never look our way and they are
    already gone, gone far into the future--the night of time. If we could
    look at a photograph of it and say there they are, they never really
    stopped but there they are. There is so much to be said, and on the
    surface of it very little gets said.

    There ought to be room for more things, for a spreading out, like.
    Being immersed in the details of rock and field and slope --letting them
    come to you for once, and then meeting them halfway would be so much
    easier--if they took an ingenuous pride in being in one's blood.
    Alas, we perceive them if at all as those things that were meant to be
    put aside-- costumes of the supporting actors or voice trilling at the
    end of a narrow enclosed street. You can do nothing with them. Not even
    offer to pay.

    It is possible that finally, like coming to the end of a long,
    barely perceptible rise, there is mutual cohesion and interaction. The
    whole scene is fixed in your mind, the music all present, as though you
    could see each note as well as hear it. I say this because there is an
    uneasiness in things just now. Waiting for something to be over before
    you are forced to notice it. The pollarded trees scarcely bucking the
    wind--and yet it's keen, it makes you fall over. Clabbered sky.
    Seasons that pass with a rush. After all it's their time
    too--nothing says they aren't to make something of it. As for Jenny
    Wren, she cares, hopping about on her little twig like she was tryin'
    to tell us somethin', but that's just it, she couldn't
    even if she wanted to--dumb bird. But the others--and they in some way
    must know too--it would never occur to them to want to, even if they
    could take the first step of the terrible journey toward feeling
    somebody should act, that ends in utter confusion and hopelessness, east
    of the sun and west of the moon. So their comment is: "No comment."
    Meanwhile the whole history of probabilities is coming to life, starting
    in the upper left-hand corner, like a sail.



    - Ashbery

    5. Your favorite non-Anglo poet

    I must cede to a 3 way tie between Francois Villon, Arthur Rimbaud or Pushkin.

    6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem

    If I walk the noisy streets,
    Or enter a many thronged church,
    Or sit among the wild young generation,
    I give way to my thoughts.

    I say to myself: the years are fleeting,
    And however many there seem to be,
    We must all go under the eternal vault,
    And someone's hour is already at hand.

    When I look at a solitary oak
    I think: the patriarch of the woods.
    It will outlive my forgotten age
    As it outlived that of my grandfathers'.

    If I dandle a young infant,
    Immediately I think: farewell!
    I will yield my place to you,
    For I must fade while your flower blooms.

    Each day, and every hour
    I habitually follow in my thoughts,
    Trying to guess from their number
    The year which brings my death.

    And where will fate send death to me?
    In battle, in my travels, or on the seas?
    Or will the neighbouring valley
    Receive my chilled ashes?

    And although to the senseless body
    It is indifferent wherever it rots,
    Yet close to my beloved countryside
    I still would prefer to rest.

    And let it be, beside the grave's vault
    That young life forever will be playing,
    And impartial, indifferent nature
    Eternally be shining in beauty

    - Pushkin

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    1. Your favorite 20th century poet

    Fernando Pessoa or Yeats or Rilke or Drummond or Ruben Dario or Frost or Vinicius de Moraes or Borges...

    2. Your favorite 20th century poem

    Leda and the Swan or Autopsicografia or Navegar é Preciso or Vou me embora para Passargada or I dunno, tomorrow some other...

    3. Your favorite living poet

    Ariano Suassuna or Manoel de Barros

    4. Your favorite poem by a living poet

    Nothing specific, maybe the book "No tempo das ignoranças"

    5. Your favorite non-Anglo poet

    Dante

    6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem[/B][/QUOTE]

    The Comedy

  9. #9
    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    Stlukes! Peek a boo!

    Accckkk!! The Brahmsian vampire pig. Me thinks you skipped out on LitNet just to avoid the celebrations of Wagner's birthday. Too bad, really... you missed out on some of Dr. Mike's Neo-Con diatribes... "America... the land of the free..." and all that.
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  10. #10
    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    I should probably answer my own poll, eh?

    1. Your favorite 20th century poet- I'd be torn between Rilke, Montale, Neruda, Borges, Yeats, Pasternak, and Eliot

    2. Your favorite 20th century poem- I'd almost certainly have to opt for The Wasteland... or perhaps Octavio Paz' Sunstone.

    3. Your favorite living poet- A slew of my most beloved poets have died over the last decade or so (Anthony Hecht, Rafael Alberti, Czesław Miłosz, Jaroslav Seifert, etc...)... this leaves me with Geoffrey Hill, Anne Carson, Yves Bonnefoy, Homero Aridjis, Richard Wilbur, Adam Zagajewski and a few others... I'd probably go with Hill.

    4. Your favorite poem by a living poet- I'd probably go with either Geoffrey Hill's Triumph of Love or Carson's Autobiography of Red (good choice JBI)... although I quite like some of the poems in Carson's Plainwater as well.. especially Cannicula di Anna

    5. Your favorite non-Anglo poet- Dante is the obvious answer. After him...? Quite likely Baudelaire.

    6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem- Dante's Comedia, Firdawsi's Shanameh and Homer's Odyssey. Shorter poems? I think Paul Celan's Death Fugue is devastating.
    Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
    The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
    My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
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  11. #11
    Artist and Bibliophile stlukesguild's Avatar
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    Ariano Suassuna or Manoel de Barros

    Brazilian? Portuguese? Unfortunately, contemporary poetry outside the languages which we can read, is quite limited in terms of accessibility. Only a few major poets from contemporary France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, Brazil, Argentina, etc... find their way into descent translations.
    Beware of the man with just one book. -Ovid
    The man who doesn't read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them.- Mark Twain
    My Blog: Of Delicious Recoil
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    1.) Favorite 20th century poet: I have to say either Stein, or Eliot, or Stevens I suppose. But all three of these are based less on my actual enjoyment and more on the things I've learned from them, or the impact they have had. Eliot and Stevens are the two most common poets people read as influencing me--and I just personally think what Stein help do for language with Tender Buttons is invaluable to someone like myself.

    2.) Favorite 20th century poem: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock was the first poem that really impressed itself upon me with thoughts and feelings with lasted. It seem to have this grand scope that I hadn't encountered before. I also love Meditation at Lagunitas by Robert Hass.

    3.) Your favorite living poet: Wow. Wow. What a question. I would say I have the opposite problem of the typical Litnetter--most of my poetry book collection is made up of books published in the last 15-20 years. Probably D.A. Powell. I also love Eduardo C. Corral, though (I get to see him read in September!) and so many more. What I love about Powell is his ability to draw upon very immediate subjects and imagery in his poems, and still give them this extraordinary sense of glamor using very beautiful, sensuous language. And all of Corral's images are so gorgeous and unique, so visceral in a way they give you a sense of the divine or of myth. Devotion perhaps? I don't know.

    4.) Your favorite poem by a living poet: The Truth About God by Anne Carson. I really don't think I can say anything about this poem, or my relationship with it that won't make me sound really stupid, so I won't.

    5.) Favorite Non-Anglo poet: I suppose either Rilke or Baudelaire. I've had so little experience with Non-Anglo poets--in poetry, I feel like things are so muddled in translation. I feel like Hesse novels are very badly translated, but I could be wrong. I've read some Lorca in translations, and Paz. Also a friend of mine, who has her own press and a few books, who is from Bulgaria who has poems in both Bulgarian and English. I do have a rather extensive list of people I want to read though.

    6.) Favorite Non-Anglo poem: Eh, I'm simply too inexperienced to answer this--in reading Les Fleurs du Mal, I tried to understand what was so significant about it, but I think after all this time, being exposed to poets who have been influenced by Baudelaire, in a big way, I am "immune" to what was magic in those poems (especially at that time). It's sometimes hard for me to put myself in "the mind" of poems, because many of them are just this kind of poem which depends on you being able to read it with sophistication, attuned to the subtleties of the work. Perhaps this kind of thing is lost in contemporary English poetry. Not sure.
    J.H.S.

  13. #13
    Dance Magic Dance OrphanPip's Avatar
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    1. Your favorite 20th century poet

    This is really a tough question, I'm bad with favourites in general. I'm leaning towards Marianne Moore at the moment. Maybe Robert Kroetsch if I'm feeling nationalistic.

    2. Your favorite 20th century poem

    That's really too hard, ah I like "The Shield of Achilles" by Auden. I'm going with that simply because I mentioned it in another thread earlier.

    3. Your favorite living poet

    I'm not a huge reader of contemporary poetry, I don't mind some Ashbery, and I do have most of Carson's stuff.

    4. Your favorite poem by a living poet

    I like Autobiography of Red too, but now it feels like bandwagoning. The Beauty of the Husband is quite underwhelming in comparison. I don't really feel like committing to too much in this category because I only infrequently read contemporary poetry.

    5. Your favorite non-Anglo poet

    Outside of 19th century French poetry, and the usual big international names, I'm not that well read in non-English poetry either. I'll go with Mallarmé or Verlaine.

    6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem

    L'Après-Midi d’un faune by Mallarmé.
    "If the national mental illness of the United States is megalomania, that of Canada is paranoid schizophrenia."
    - Margaret Atwood

  14. #14
    Well with modern, non-English and living it probably does by my own admission put me in the minority of reading to be fair! Of course studying a pure English literature degree doesn’t help that much either, but that has long finished now so I don’t have that excuse. I’ll have a go anyway.

    1. Your favorite 20th century poet

    Thinking about it I’m probably more exposed to contemporary poetry than I would have thought. This is probably due in part to working with the AQA GCSE poetry syllabus. Some of their usual slew of poets include the likes of Simon Armitage (who teaches at Sheffield University), Carol Ann Duffy, John Agard, Grace Nichols, Choman Hardi, Ciaran Carson, Imtiaz Dharker, Andrew Foster and a well of other characters with one off pieces. From this lot unfortunately I can’t say anything has really taken my fancy apart from the odd line here or there or a bit of humour in the likes of Agard or Zephaniah. There are also some really horrendous pieces like this one by Jane Weir probably champions them all: http://www.janeweir.co.uk/POPPIES.html, I couldn’t teach that one without pointing out how horrendous it was, I’m not one for neutrality!

    When it comes to 20C poets I do like it is hard to name a favourite to be honest - Auden, Yeats, Benjamin? Not enough to go with. I have no obvious favourite at all really. Neruda? Hughes I’m enjoying at the moment, and maybe with time but…? Eliot’s interesting but has never really let me in. Frost? Really, I just don’t know. I don’t feel like I have connected enough to any one poet of the 20th century to honestly name a favourite. Not in the same way I am connected to older poets (dinosaurs as someone called them the other day) such as Wordsworth, Keats, Milton, Shakespeare for example. However, I’m certainly not dismissive of contemporary poetry and the grounds that it is contemporary or non-Anglo poets on the grounds of their non-Angloness. Clueless to a degree, but not guilty I think of automatically dismissing the last 100 years of the written word.

    (StLukes 1 0 Other?)

    2. Your favorite 20th century poem

    The two that immediate spring to mind time and time again are Auden’s ‘Funeral Blues’ and Betjeman’s ‘A Subaltern’s Love Song,’ magic.

    (Stlukes 2 0 Other?)

    3. Your favorite living poet
    4. Your favorite poem by a living poet


    I don’t know I’m going to struggle with this as just don’t think I have connected to contemporary living poet enough to name these yet. This is good in a way because it leaves plenty open to discover. I think a lot of contemporary poetry that works well, and 20th century poetry too, tends to not take itself too seriously and uses humour. Is this the post modern element at play, I don’t know? Humour is evident in the above two poems, but also found in the likes of local Northern poets such as Ian McMillian:

    *http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MumnMsqGY0Y*
    *Not to be Missed*

    Now I think there is some fun to be had there, especially after some beers, reading/following the likes of that. I know that I would rather teach that for kicks that some of the ‘worthy’ anti-ismism stuff found in the AQA syllabus. I would like to explore poems in areas such as this a little more. I’m going to look for some Ian McMillan stuff later, though I am into nature at the moment very much.

    (Stlukes 2 Other 2?)

    5. Your favorite non-Anglo poet

    Hmm, possibly Baudelaire or Verlaine, Verlaine has found a place by the bath of late, but historically I vowed to learn French using only by duel translation Baudelaire. It didn’t happen but the intention of learning a language solely through the medium of poetry deserves great merit I think! I also love the simple verses found in the Buddhist text The Dhamapada. I enjoyed reading Leopardi but I’ve not read enough to put him in the above bracket, same with the likes of Dante, Homer etc, I think these require repeated readings in different translations really, unless you know the original. I did enjoy The Odyssey very much though. Oh, if you can include playwrights then I enjoyed reading Euripides a lot one time.

    (Stlukes 3 Other 2?)

    6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem

    There are several passages I know almost by heart from the Dhamapada and one or two poems that shine a little here and there but none that really sing to me to reach upon the upper mantle of favourite I think. Translation still remains a thorn in non-Anglo poetry I think.

    (Stlukes 3 Other 3?)

    (Stlukes wins the argument after a passionate appeal to the jury. He conceded the natural bias towards Englishness and the gaps in contemporary favourites, but argued strongly (with arms waving) that, although there are clueless gaps certainly, there is no fundamentally grounded contemporary bias to be found here at all. Indeed, he pointed out that he finds a Neely looking forward to discovering new and exciting contemporary artists, especially within the realms of pie and ale memorabilia. In short, he finds and an open mind; not a closed one.

    The crowd cheered, the judge shouted for order and slammed down his tired hammer but in the end the jury's vote was unanimous).
    Last edited by LitNetIsGreat; 05-25-2012 at 08:11 AM.

  15. #15
    Alea iacta est. mortalterror's Avatar
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    1. Your favorite 20th century poet
    T.S. Eliot, followed by Yeats, Frost, Pound, Cavafy, Lorca, and Auden. Dario also did some nice things in the 20th century.

    2. Your favorite 20th century poem
    The Wasteland gave me goosebumps the first time I read it.

    3. Your favorite living poet
    Derek Walcott

    4. Your favorite poem by a living poet
    I am a Cowboy in the Boat of Ra by Ishmael Reed followed by A City's Death By Fire by Derek Walcott and The Death of Allegory by Billy Collins

    5. Your favorite non-Anglo poet
    Cavafy

    6. Your favorite non-Anglo poem
    Lament for Ignacio Sánchez Mejías by Lorca
    "So-Crates: The only true wisdom consists in knowing that you know nothing." "That's us, dude!"- Bill and Ted
    "This ain't over."- Charles Bronson
    Feed the Hungry!

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