opinions upon (favourite poems by etc)...

...two poets who are in no relation to each other. I just stumbled over them and wondered what people thought of their poetical output.

Richard Le Gallienne

and


James Russell Lowell


x

on Richard Le Gallienne...http://www.harpers.org/archive/1920/12/0004703

on James Russell Lowell...http://infomotions.com/etexts/gutenb...7948/17948.htm both of the last two postings intended to shed some light on your question...to...Ifiaskaquestion, also both from Project Guttenberg quasimodo1

I personally find that Lowells poems can become alittle monotonous, too samey... does anyone feel the same ?

Sometimes i become caught up in a poem then stand back for a moment... and begin to read the others and feel i got alittle too excited over it.


Richard Le Gallienne didn't really touch me enough to want to buy and of his work.


On a different note i have been searching searchin and searching to find poets who can take me back to a love i found... Byron, Keats, Burns, Dante, Shelly, Rossetti, Dickinson, Akhmatova, Pushkin, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Goethe, have bee able to do it.

Can anyone help me find more ?

If I'm not being too presumptious, let me say that you are probably too new to classic poetry to make judgements such as the one you mentioned. You would want to read more about method, style and the specific poet's artistic idiosyncrasies before you label him that way. Poets don't remain in the classic list for no reason, to say the least. Also relative to you trying to recall a specific poem that is important to you personally, I would need more data (and dates of publication perhaps) to make even an educated guess. Perhaps you could quote just one line or you might have some clarity about the subject of the work. The list you supplied would only be helpful if your poet in question was associated with them in some way. Love to help, but try to send some relevant clues. And don't give up on poetry...it is great and an asset to the enjoyment of all kinds of writing. Sincerely, quasimodo1

I am new to poetry, but i've been trying to cover ground quickly, which is against the nature of poetry... i feel asthough i need to soak it all up ever last word.

I was trying to put down Lowells work, it's not bad, but his lyrical work doesn't make me feel excited.

Could you tell me what you think of the two poets work ? Please x

http://www.online-literature.com/author_index.php This site has poets galore, just scan the e-texts of poets (they are mixed in with prose authors). quasimodo1

what can you tell me about Lowell (i have recently read alittle about him) and his work ?


I'd agree with an piece i read that mentioned he was over-rated in his time.

I haven't read anything by Lowell since one of those high-school courses on American literature. This says nothing for or against him. I just haven't come across him since in spite of having read a lot of poetry. As for Richard Le Gallienne... I can't swear to having ever read any original work by him. I will say, however, that I did very much enjoy his translations of poems by Hafiz. Looking at the list of poets you admit to admiring (mostly the Romantic through early Modernist periods) I can offer a few suggestions: check out the Germans Friederich Hölderlin and Novalis (Hymns to the Night). You mention three of the great French Symbolists (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine). You might also check into Mallarme, Gautier, and Paul Valery. You've also mentioned several of the key British Romantics. The next logical step would seem to be to cover Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake. I would also suggest Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and W.B. Yeats. As for Rossetti... which one? Dante or his sister? Akhmatova and Pushkin are a good introduction to Russian poetry... to which I would add Marina Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak (who is unfortunately known only for Doctor Zhivago to many. I would also certainly suggest that you read some older poetry. Dante is perhaps the best place to start and from there you might check out Sappho, Homer, Virgil, Horace, Ovid, Guido Cavalcanti, Petrarch, Shakespeare, John Donne, Spencer, Milton, Robert Herrick, Thomas Traherne, John Clare, Pierre Ronsard, Beowulf, San Juan de la Cruz (Saint John of the Cross), etc... Among the modern poets my personal favorites include W.B. Yeats, Hart Crane, T.S. Eliot, Rilke, Eugenio Montale, Paul Celan, Anthony Hecht, Charles Simic, Yehuda Amichai, W.S. Merwin, Dylan Thomas, Federico Garcia Lorca, Rafael Alberti, Antonio Machado, Octavio Paz, Neruda, Pessoa, J.L. Borges, etc... Just a few to start with:)

To Ifiaskaquestion: J.R. Lowell was actually quite the man of his time. (1819-1891) He was considered then one of the "Fireside" or "Schoolroom" poets; a firm abolitionist of blatant moralistic qualities. His contribution would have been to American "Arthurian Literature" which at its center is about the quest for the Holy Grail (truth) and how this quest leads a man of God to truth and humility. His poem "The Vision of Sir Launfal" and the "author's note" which precedes it just about tell the whole story of the man and his version of morality. (I thank Stukesguild(spelling?) for posting as I was sidetracked by lawyer stuff ) I will post part of "The Vision of Sir Launfal" next so you can relate these comments to his most famous work. quasimodo1

Prelude to Part First

Over his keys the musing organist,
Beginning doubtfully and far away,
First lets his fingers wander as they list,
And builds a bridge from Dreamland for his lay:
Then, as the touch of his loved instrument
Gives hopes and fervor, nearer draws his theme,
First guessed by faint auroral flushes sent
Along the wavering vista of his dream.

Not only around our infancy
Doth heaven with all its splendors lie;
Daily, with souls that cringe and plot,
We Sinais climb and know it not;
Over our manhood bend the skies;
Against our fallen and traitor lives
The great winds utter prophecies;
With our faint hearts the mountain strives;
Its arms outstretched, the druid wood
Waits with its benedicite;
And to our age's drowsy blood
Still shouts the inspiring sea.

Earth gets its price for what Earth gives us;
The beggar is taxed for a corner to die in,
The priest hath his fee who comes and shrives us,
We bargain for the graves we lie in;
At the Devil's booth are all things sold
Each ounce of dross costs its ounce of gold;
For a cap and bells our lives we pay,
Bubbles we earn with a whole soul's tasking:
'T is heaven alone that is given away,
'T is only God may be had for the asking;
There is no price set on the lavish summer,
And June may be had by the poorest comer.

And what is so rare as a day in June?
Then, if ever, come perfect days;
Then Heaven tries the earth if it be in tune,
And over it softly her warm ear lays:
Whether we look, or whether we listen,
We hear life murmur, or see it glisten;
Every clod feels a stir of might,
An instinct within it that reaches and towers,
And, grasping blindly above it for light,
Climbs to a soul in grass and flowers;
The flush of life may well be seen
Thrilling back over hills and valleys;
The cowslip startles in meadows green,
The buttercup catches the sun in its chalice,
And there 's never a leaf or a blade too mean
To be some happy creature's palace;
The little bird sits at his door in the sun,
Atilt like a blossom among the leaves,
And lets his illumined being o'errun
With the deluge of summer it receives;
His mate feels the eggs beneath her wings,
And the heart in her dumb breast flutters and sings;
He sings to the wide world, and she to her nest,--
In the nice ear of Nature which song is the best?

Now is the high-tide of the year,
And whatever of life hath ebbed away
Comes flooding back, with a ripply cheer,
Into every bare inlet and creek and bay;
Now the heart is so full that a drop overfills it,
We are happy now because God so wills it;
No matter how barren the past may have been,
'T is enough for us now that the leaves are green;
We sit in the warm shade and feel right well
How the sap creeps up and the blossoms swell;
We may shut our eyes, but we cannot help knowing
That skies are clear and grass is growing;
The breeze comes whispering in our ear,
That dandelions are blossoming near,
That maize has sprouted, that streams are flowing,
That the river is bluer than the sky,
That the robin is plastering his house hard by;
And if the breeze kept the good news back,
For other couriers we should not lack;
We could guess it all by yon heifer's lowing,--
And hark! how clear bold chanticleer,
Warmed with the new wine of the year,
Tells all in his lusty crowing!

Joy comes, grief goes, we know not how;
Every thing is happy now,
Every thing is upward striving;
'T is as easy now for the heart to be true
As for grass to be green or skies to be blue,--
'T is the natural way of living:
Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake;
And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
The soul partakes the season's youth,
And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth,
Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.
What wonder if Sir Launfal now
Remembered the keeping of his vow?

Part First
I

"My golden spurs now bring to me,
And bring to me my richest mail,
For to-morrow I go over land and sea
In search of the Holy Grail;
Shall never a bed for me be spread,
Nor shall a pillow be under my head,
Till I begin my vow to keep;
Here on the rushes will I sleep,
And perchance there may come a vision true
Ere day create the world anew."
Slowly Sir Launfal's eyes grew dim,
Slumber fell like a cloud on him,
And into his soul the vision flew.

II

The crows flapped over by twos and threes,
In the pool drowsed the cattle up to their knees,
The little birds sang as if it were
The one day of summer in all the year,
And the very leaves seemed to sing on the trees:
The castle alone in the landscape lay
Like an outpost of winter, dull and gray;
'T was the proudest hall in the North Countree,
And never its gates might opened be,
Save to lord or lady of high degree;
Summer besieged it on every side,
But the churlish stone her assaults defied;
She could not scale the chilly wall,
Though round it for leagues her pavilions tall
Stretched left and right,
Over the hills and out of sight;
Green and broad was every tent,
And out of each a murmur went
Till the breeze fell off at night.


III

The drawbridge dropped with a surly clang,
And through the dark arch a charger sprang,
Bearing Sir Launfal, the maiden knight,
In his gilded mail, that flamed so bright
It seemed the dark castle had gathered all
Those shafts the fierce sun had shot over its wall
In his siege of three hundred summers long,
And, binding them all in one blazing sheaf,
Had cast them forth: so, young and strong,
And lightsome as a locust-leaf,
Sir Launfal flashed forth in his unscarred mail,
To seek in all climes for the Holy Grail.


IV

It was morning on hill and stream and tree,
And morning in the young knight's heart;
Only the castle moodily
Rebuffed the gifts of the sunshine free,
And gloomed by itself apart;
The season brimmed all other things up
Full as the rain fills the pitcher-plant's cup.

V

As Sir Launfal made morn through the darksome gate,
He was ware of a leper, crouched by the same,
Who begged with his hand and moaned as he sate;
And a loathing over Sir Launfal came,
The sunshine went out of his soul with a thrill,
The flesh 'neath his armor did shrink and crawl,
And midway its leap his heart stood still
Like a frozen waterfall;
For this man, so foul and bent of stature,
Rasped harshly against his dainty nature,
And seemed the one blot on the summer morn,--
So he tossed him a piece of gold in scorn. [ part of "The Vision of Sir Launfal" by James Russell Lowell ]

quasimodo1, thankyou for your information, it was very helpful. If only everone on forums was as helpful as you & stlukesguild.

Stlukesguild, i have read some on your list...


Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Blake,Thomas Hardy, Walt Whitman, Hart Crane, and W.B. Yeats, Donne, Pierre De Ronsard (i love his stuff), Sappho (hers too), Petrarch (him three), Guddo Calvacanti (his four), ovid (five), Shakespeare, Neruda, Yeats.


Thankyou for the other suggestions .

x

To ifiaskaquestion: de nada. quasi

quasimodo1 would you be able to tell me the main subjects that feature in Thomas Chattertons poetry ?


x

To ifiaskaquestion: If you start asking questions like this, you might have to change your avatar to "ifihadtheanswers". This guy, sorry, poet, I had only a fleeting moment with and had to look him up. I can't really buy that he's regarged as the first true Romantic poet but that's the word some places. Here a quote, re: bio.... Thomas Chatterton (1752 - 1770)



Thomas Chatterton:



"Thomas Chatterton was born in Bristol on November 20, 1752 and is generally regarded as the first Romantic poet in English.

Throughout his early childhood Chatterton showed no signs of talent. He was regarded as little better than an idiot until he was about six and a half years old, because he would learn nothing, refused to play with other children, and spent most of his time brooding in silence. He was expelled from his first school as a dullard." Don't let that throw you off this poet because they treated Einstein the same way. wait abit for another note about this poet. quasimodo1

To ifiaskaquestion: Chatterton is much better than my memory of him...back in the day. He made an intellectual u-turn after the "dullard" incident. Here is a specific and not-for-profit website dedicated to him....http://human.ntu.ac.uk/chatterton/ Let me know if this answers your question. How did you come by your interest in this particular poet? quasimodo1

"The Sleeper" by Edgar Allan Poe
At midnight, in the month of June,
I stand beneath the mystic moon.
An opiate vapor, dewy, dim,
Exhales from out her golden rim,
And, softly dripping, drop by drop,
Upon the quiet mountain top,
Steals drowsily and musically
Into the universal valley.
The rosemary nods upon the grave;
The lily lolls upon the wave;
Wrapping the fog about its breast,
The ruin molders into rest;
Looking like Lethe, see! the lake
A conscious slumber seems to take,
And would not, for the world, awake.
All Beauty sleeps!- and lo! where lies
Irene, with her Destinies!

O, lady bright! can it be right-
This window open to the night?
The wanton airs, from the tree-top,
Laughingly through the lattice drop-
The bodiless airs, a wizard rout,
Flit through thy chamber in and out,
And wave the curtain canopy
So fitfully- so fearfully-
Above the closed and fringed lid
'Neath which thy slumb'ring soul lies hid,
That, o'er the floor and down the wall,
Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall!
Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear?
Why and what art thou dreaming here?
Sure thou art come O'er far-off seas,
A wonder to these garden trees!
Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress,
Strange, above all, thy length of tress,
And this all solemn silentness!

The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep,
Which is enduring, so be deep!
Heaven have her in its sacred keep!
This chamber changed for one more holy,
This bed for one more melancholy,
I pray to God that she may lie
For ever with unopened eye,
While the pale sheeted ghosts go by!

My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep
As it is lasting, so be deep!
Soft may the worms about her creep!
Far in the forest, dim and old,
For her may some tall vault unfold-
Some vault that oft has flung its black
And winged panels fluttering back,
Triumphant, o'er the crested palls,
Of her grand family funerals-
Some sepulchre, remote, alone,
Against whose portal she hath thrown,
In childhood, many an idle stone-
Some tomb from out whose sounding door
She ne'er shall force an echo more,
Thrilling to think, poor child of sin!
It was the dead who groaned within.

Thankyou for the link on Chatterton... i have been searching for websites about him.

He seems to be mentioned by other romantic poets as a wasted genius, that's how i lead to him.



x

For Ifiaskaquestion: http://tkline.pgcc.net/PITBR/French/...m#_Toc24461586 the best link in English... quasimodo1

Thankyou for the link, much appreciated. May i be so bold as to ask you for one more this time by the Stephen Mallarme ?


If i ask a question... please don't sigh x

To Ifiaskaquestion: No sighing here but his poetry is not very accessable. See neglected poets thread for today's entry/ Stephen Mallarme. quasimodo1

Quasimodo what is your opinion on Friedrich Schillers poetry ?

or anyone elses ? x

I don't know that I would consider Mallarmé to be "unaccessible"... although his poetry can certainly be quite demanding... requiring some real effort to wrap your brain around it. But then this can be true of Donne, Milton, Dickinson... a whole lot of poetry. I find his earlier work easy enough. It certainly falls into the tradition of the French Symbolists:

Anguish

I come tonight not to conquer your body, O creature
In whom course a people's sins, nor to burrow
In your tainted hair a dismal tempest
Beneath the fatal ennui poured by my kiss.

I ask of your bed the heavy sleep without dreams
Of remorse hovering beneath the unfamiliar curtains
And which you too may savor after your dark lies'
You who know more of the void than the dead.

For vice, gnawing at my innate nobility
Has branded me as you with it's sterility,
But while in your breast of stone there lives

A heart that the tooth of no crime can despoil,
I flee, pale, broken, haunted by my shroud,
In fear of dying when I sleep alone.


Sea Breeze

The flesh is sad, alas! and I've read all the books.
To escape! To flee away! I sense the birds drunk
With joy to be amid foreign foam and skies!
Naught, neither ancient gardens the skies reflect
Can contain this heart, steeped in the sea
O nights! nor the solitary light of my lamp
On the blank sheet which its whiteness shields
Nor the young wife nursing her child.
I shall depart! Steamer with your swaying masts,
Lift anchor for an exotic landscape!

An ennui, ravaged by cruel expectations,
Still believes in the final adieux of handkerchiefs!
And, perhaps, the masts inviting the tempests
Are such as a gale bends toward shipwrecks
Lost, without masts, no masts, no fertile isles...
But, O my heart!, listen to the sailor's song!

Stéphane Mallarmé
tr. by Daisy Aldan
Sky Blue Press

Later poems by Mallarmé grow increasingly dense... almost abstract... until his most innovative work, Un Coup De Dés (A Throw of the Dice). This poem was the supreme realization of his continual fascination with how a poem appeared visually upon the page (Mallarmé was very concerned with the notion that a single sonnet, for example, should not be clustered with two or three other works upon the page... or worse yet, cropped off and finished upon the next. In Un Coup De Dés Mallarmé attempted to create a poem... a work of literature which one did not experience in a linear manner (from start to finish) but rather as one might experience a a work of visual art... where certain more central elements drew our eye first because of their visual prominence... and then our eye was free to wonder at will and explore secondary and tertiary passages... recognizing certain repetitions and continually returning to the focal point. This poem spreads out over some 20+ pages. A look at two pages can be seen here:

http://i90.photobucket.com/albums/k2...d/mallarme.jpg

Some of the most "abstract" and dense of Mallarmé's works are to be found in his poem/poem fragments composed in response to his son, Anatole's death. Mallarmé was considered the ultimate "Olympian"... a "formalist"... a poet who did not create poetry as some sort of personal expression of feelings in the Romantic sense... but rather as a creator of beautiful, perfect works of literary art. His son's death, to a great extent, was completely beyond the bounds of his art... and he left the entire project unfinished. The fragments, however, have gained a contemporary audience among those who no longer find the fragmentary shocking. The poems remind me of some late works by Paul Celan:

2.

better
as if he (when)
still were ---
whatever they may have been,
of epithets
worthy- etc.
the hours when
you were and
were not

3.

sick in
springtime
dead in fall
---it is the sun
---
the wave
idea the cough


6.

did not know
mother, and son did
not know me! ---
--- the image of myself
other than myself
borne off
in death!

Stephane Mallarmé
tr. Paul Auster
North Point Press

what is your opinion on Friedrich Schillers poetry ?

I certainly love what Beethoven did with An die Freude. I haven't come across much of Schiller's poetry in English translation... and my high-school German is beyond "rusty". Hölderlin's poetry was magnificently dealt with by several brilliant translators... especially Michael Hamburger. I only wish that Schiller had been so well served.

Here are some links to his poetry translated into English :

http://www.schillerinstitute.org/tra...il_1poems.html

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6794/6794-h/6794-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6795/6795-h/6795-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6796/6796-h/6796-h.htm

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/6797/6797-h/6797-h.htm

Tell me what you think of it x

To Ifiaskaquestion: I have to say, Stlukesguild has eclipsed me here. Let me take another look at someone I hardly remember. Have to remark that Stlukesguild's avatar reminds me of something from antiquity...but what? quasi

The Division of the World
.................................................. ..........................
“Take thence the world!” call’d Zeus from his high summit
To all mankind. “Take, that which yours should be.
As heritage eterne to you I grant it—”
Divide it ye, yet brotherly!”

Then did all hands to preparations scurry,
Both young and old industrious became.
The farmer seiz’d the produce from the country,
The Junker through the woods stalk’d game.

The merchant in his stores had riches hoarded,
The abbot chose the noble vintage wine,
The king had all the roads and bridges boarded
And claim’d: “the tithe of all is mine.”

Quite late, just as division was accomplish’d
The poet near’d, he came from far away—”
Ah! nothing more remain’d to be distinguish’d
A lord o’er everything had sway!

“Ah! Woe is me! for why should I then solely
Forgotten be, I, thy most faithful son?”
Thus did he make his accusation loudly
And threw himself fore Jove’s high throne.

“If thou to dwell in dreamland have decided,”
Replied the god, “then quarrel not with me.
Where wert thou then, when I the world divided?”
“I was,“ the poet said, “by thee.”

“Mine eyes did hang on thy expression,
Upon they heaven’s harmony my ear—”
Forgive the spirit, which, by thy reflection
Enrapt, did lose the earthly sphere.”

“What can be done?“ said Zeus, “for all is given;
The crops, the hunt, the marts are no more free.
Wouldst thou abide with me within my heaven—”
Whene’er thou com’st, ’twill open be to thee.”

http://www.literary-quotations.com/g/goethe.html Also here find Schiller's quatations. You can learn something from these references but surely not all. One of Schiller's plays was made into a classical overture, something about an aristocrat and commoner, an apple and an arrow.