why not post or share you most recent poem you have so far.
it would be good to read it too:)
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why not post or share you most recent poem you have so far.
it would be good to read it too:)
here is one I read recently entitled
Elegance by Linda Gregg
All that is uncared for.
Left alone in the stillness
in that pure silence married
to the stillness of nature.
A door off its hinges,
shade and shadows in an empty room.
Leaks for light. Raw where
the tin roof rusted through.
The rustle of weeds in their
different kinds of air in the mornings,
year after year.
A pecan tree, and the house
made out of mud bricks. Accurate
and unexpected beauty, rattling
and singing. If not to the sun,
then to nothing and to no one.
Oh, man. (walks to room for book like every other post) The most recent poem I've read is recent, "Home Burial" by Robert Frost. I'm going through his book of complete poems. It's a big long. Part of it reads:
You couldn't care! The nearest friends can go
With anyone to death, comes so far short
They might as well not try to go at all.
I'm also reading E. E. Cummings, and I have Emily Dickinson on the backburner. I would like to read some recent Shakespearean sonnets by a single author to spruce me up on the medium. I have read Shakespeare's sonnets.
That's a really beautiful poem, cacian. And Robert Frost is always good, Whosis, maybe particularly when he is discoursing on death, which is not how we generally think of him.
Here is one I came across in the book Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott that I just read. It's a poem by Sharon Olds. I just had such a strong reaction to it. I knew-I knew exactly how she felt.
I Go Back to May 1937
I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,
I see my father strolling out
under the ochre sandstone arch, the
red tiles glinting like bent
plates of blood behind his head, I
see my mother with a few light books at her hip
standing at the pillar made of tiny bricks,
the wrought-iron gate still open behind her, its
sword-tips aglow in the May air,
they are about to graduate, they are about to get married,
they are kids, they are dumb, all they know is they are
innocent, they would never hurt anybody.
I want to go up to them and say Stop,
don’t do it—she’s the wrong woman,
he’s the wrong man, you are going to do things
you cannot imagine you would ever do,
you are going to do bad things to children,
you are going to suffer in ways you have not heard of,
you are going to want to die. I want to go
up to them there in the late May sunlight and say it,
her hungry pretty face turning to me,
her pitiful beautiful untouched body,
his arrogant handsome face turning to me,
his pitiful beautiful untouched body,
but I don’t do it. I want to live. I
take them up like the male and female
paper dolls and bang them together
at the hips, like chips of flint, as if to
strike sparks from them, I say
Do what you are going to do, and I will tell about it.
Crikey, that's strong stuff. What a powerful poem.Quote:
Originally Posted by qimissung
I know, right!?
I enjoyed reading Sharon Old's Stags Leap.
At the moment I'm reading the current issue of Rattle: www.rattle.com
The back issues are available and to pick out one as an example, I liked "Rome" by Toi Derricote: http://www.rattle.com/poetry/rome-by-toi-derricotte/
Elegance is really elegant and I like this poem so much that I am internalizing every line of it. Your choice is really superb and I am looking up for the life of this poet. Thank you for sharing this beautiful poem.Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
amasing piece by the 11 year old so lurid and yet simple. raw talent indeed :)Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
hey osho so glad you liked this one :)Quote:
Originally Posted by osho
Right now I'm reading the latest issue of American Poetry Review, which, sadly, isn't digitized so I can't post anything; which is no great loss since I haven't read anything of real high quality in the latest issue yet.
Liberty by Edward Thomas
The last light has gone out of the world, except
This moonlight lying on the grass like frost
Beyond the brink of the tall elm's shadow.
It is as if everything else had slept
Many an age, unforgotten and lost -
The men that were, the things done, long ago,
All I have thought; and but the moon and I
Live yet and here stand idle over a grave
Where all is buried. Both have liberty
To dream what we could do if we were free
To do some thing we had desired long,
The moon and I. There's none less free than who
Does nothing and has nothing else to do,
Being free only for what is not to his mind,
And nothing is to his mind. If every hour
Like this one passing that I have spent among
The wiser others when I have forgot
To wonder whether I was free or not,
Were piled before me, and not lost behind,
And I could take and carry them away
I should be rich; or if I had the power
To wipe out every one and not again
Regret, I should be rich to be so poor.
And yet I still am half in love with pain,
With what is imperfect, with both tears and mirth,
With things that have an end, with life and earth,
And this moon that leaves me dark within the door.
Most recent poem I've read is in Latin. By Catullus. Poem 1, to be precise. I'll not post the text.
why not?Quote:
Originally Posted by Poetaster
I didn't think anyone would be interested, but it's thus:Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
I.
Cui dono lepidum novum libellum
arida modo pumice expolitum?
Corneli, tibi: namque tu solebas
meas esse aliquid putare nugas.
Iam tum, cum ausus es unus Italorum
omne aevum tribus explicare cartis . . .
Doctis, Iuppiter, et laboriosis!
Quare habe tibi quidquid hoc libelli—
qualecumque, quod, o patrona virgo,
plus uno maneat perenne saeclo!
I love the rhythm in this poem.
great :)
are you able to transfer it to English do you think?
or maybe just give an idea of what it is saying.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
I gather it is about the history of the world. is he saying his predictions are false?Quote:
Originally Posted by Poetaster
I don't know. I think that might be the point, however.Quote:
Originally Posted by cacian
interesting. how come you are so well read with Latin?Quote:
Originally Posted by Poetaster
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.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
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
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/Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
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:Quote:
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.
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.
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.Quote:
Originally Posted by YesNo
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.
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.
I started reading Dryden's Aeneid, mal4mac. It's in rhymed iambic pentameter and so far quite entertaining with Juno getting hot and bothered.
I'll hold my hand up and say I like the Fagles translation. Fagles as a translator is consistently very good, though his Aeneid does have some problems. For one thing, his Virgil sounds and feels a lot like his Homer. Also, Fagles seems to like these elegant, phrases over Virgil's Latin which was written in this somewhat clunky high style. There is supposed to be a friction to Virgil's poem, and there just isn't in Fagles' translation of it. Still, Fagles is good if you want a reasonably accurate translation of the poem, and I still use it whenever I teach The Aeneid, which isn't often, sadly.
About it being propaganda - well, that's one interpretation of it. I can't say it's the one I would agree with, as the tone is really the deciding factor in that sense. And since there is still scholarly debate on that very subject still, it's more than reasonable to assume that that is intentional. The Aeneid should not really be compared against Homer, Homer and Virgil were doing different things, and in terms of nearly everything Homer would obviously win out.
so there are variations of understanding with regards to Aeneid?Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
how does one feel about a script/piece that has multiple understanding and none has not one common ground with all of them?
the translations in other words are agreed to differ?
Although I've read both of Homer's classics (with a struggle!) I've never been able to read a few pages of Virgil without thinking, "some other time, maybe". (I've just done it again!)
"The general reader... in Latin literature... may be as rare as the ivory-billed woodpecker" - David Ross
I have read but understood I could not conquer I won?Quote:
Originally Posted by mal4mac
there is a difference between wanting to reread for clarification and wanting to reread because one could not the first time.:D
I guess the over-riding issue I have with The Aeneid, is that everything Virgil did with it, Homer just flat out did it better, imo. I can see the historic relevance of it in setting up an epic history for the Romans, but the poem just feels flat to me. I would not go so far as to call it bad, especially because of the way it fleshes out the sack of Troy and the Trojan horse. I remember when reading The Iliad and The Odyssey I kept wondering why their was not significant mention or elaboration of the Trojan horse, which is so intertwined with the whole story. The Aeneid provides this vital piece and imo, completes The Iliad by showing us the sack of Troy and what happened to the survivors.
I'm not sure if the differing translations so much change the story, as change the feel of the story. I initially said the Robert Fitzgerald or Allen Mandelbaum translations might be better picks for The Aeneid, because they use a longer, more flowery or eloquent style than Robert Fagles, imo. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE my Fagles translations of Homer. He prioritized force, speed, and clarity, while using a somewhat colloquial style with moments of great eloquence. It gives his translations of these works a down-to-earth feel while retaining the epic qualities. I feel that this style was similarly used for The Aeneid and it just doesn't quite work the same way. The colloquialisms used for Homer do not translate well to Virgil.
Another thing that really, really stood out to me, were the similes. In The Iliad and The Odyssey they were ALWAYS, for me, highly effective in generating great visualizations, but some reason in The Aeneid they seemed to distract me from the story. I cannot really explain it better than that.
That is the thing though. Fagles is best for the Greek poets, and their rapid, direct, and constant style. He misses their long, long lines, but that's not such a huge problem for me. His translation style was just not suited to the more verbally complex and tonally ambiguous Virgil. I do understand what you mean, Vota, Virgil is no match for Homer - but ... who was? That seems an unfair benchmark considering Homer set the stage on which pretty much it not actually all western fiction is played on.
Virgil was known for his eclogue, bucolic writings about the simple, rustic, Roman farm - and yet wrote this epic poem that even reuses lines from his pastoral poem The Georgics, whereas Homer belongs to the tradition of the oral story teller, and almost certainly had centuries of refinement to back him up, if he existed at all. With Virgil it was essentially an all new poem with an old story behind it, and it was a poem that apparently was never finished too. Comparing Virgil's epic to the Homeric epics is perfectly understandable, I guess, but it is also rather unfair I think.
Do either of you have comparative examples from each of the translators to illustrate their strengths or weaknesses?
Here are two renderings of the same scene.
The Fagles translation:
The Fitzgerald translation:Quote:
Then Juno in all her power, filled with pity
for Dido's agonizing death, her labor long and hard,
sped Iris down from Olympus to release her spirit
wrestling now in a deathlock with her limbs.
Since she was dying a death not fated or deserved,
no, tormented, before her day, in a blaze of passion--
Prosperina had yet to pluck a golden lock from her head
and commit her life to the Styx and the dark world below.
So Iris, glistening dew, comes skimming down from the sky
on gilded wings, trailing showers of iridescence shimmering
into the sun, and hovering over Dido's head, declares:
"So commanded, I take this lock as a sacred gift
to the God of Death, and I release you from your body."
With that, she cut the lock with her hand and all at once
the warmth slipped away, the life dissolved in the winds
Quote:
... Almighty Juno,
Filled with pity for this long ordeal
And difficult passage, now sent Iris down
Out of Olympus to set free
The wrestling spirit from the body's hold.
For since she died, not at her fated span
Nor as she merited, but before her time
Enflamed and driven mad, Proserpina
Had not yet plucked from her the golden hair,
Delivering her to Orcus of the Styx.
So humid Iris through bright heaven flew
On saffron-yellow wings, and in her train
A thousand hues shimmered before the sun.
At Dido's head she came to rest.
"This token
Sacred to Dis I bear away as bidden
And free you from your body."
Saying this,
She cut a lock of hair. Along with it
Her body's warmth fell into dissolution,
And out into the winds her life withdrew.
which of the two do you prefer?