Poetry Bookclub 2

[Petrarch's Love]

Looks great. I put in a vote for Montale because I know next to nothing about him but have long meant to look into his stuff. I'll most likely be able to access any volume you decide on at our university library, so just give the heads up when you've decided on the book.

William Arrowsmith is the man! His translation of Petronius' Satyricon is amazing; some of the best I've ever seen. His translations of Euripides are also pretty great. He has a collection of the ancient Greek plays translated entirely by poets, which beats the heck out of those cheap Grene and Lattimore volumes everyone's always buying.

Nonsense. Everyone knows it's simply not done to buy anything but Loeb editions. Festive, Christmas-like red and green shelves are the badge of honor of the dead language geek! Seriously, though, I am also an Arrowsmith fan. I didn't know he had done Italian translation too, so I'll be interested to look at his work with Montale.

[JBI]

How about we try his first anthology, Cuttlefish Bones, then?

[quasimodo1]

JBI: This "cuttlefish" collection...it is bilingual, correct? Looks like we will be purchasing the text and I'm willing to transfer any text to file...in order to transmit the material to anyone who needs to avoid spending thier hard-earned funds. Looks like you, Stlukes, Jozanny and Virgil have the podium, (snickering), until at least 9 or 10PM.

[stlukesguild]

Yes... it is bilingual and contains a good amount of notes... although not as many as the Galassi edition. Shall we set a day/time to begin? I'll need some time to brush through the work, but I do have one poem I'd like to put out for discussion.

[quasimodo1]

This will be our text/collection by Eugenio Montale, translated by William Arrowsmith. -- http://www.amazon.com/Cuttlefish-Bon...3704695&sr=1-2 Again, anyone without this text [which right now includes me] not to worry as poems discussed will be transmitted via PM as needed. For some examples of Montale's poetry, you can visit agni online. -- http://www-test.bu.edu/agni/poetry/p...6-montale.html .

[Kafka's Crow]

"I am always a bit too late, in everything that needs be done"

Couldn't find Cuttlefish Bones on Amazon UK. Ordered it from the US site, should be here soon. I am just a follower here, lead me anywhere you want. I am glad Plath wasn't chosen, though. These are all new poets to me. Ask me about Haney, Hughes, Zephanayah, Motion etc. My world of contemporary poetry world is either too narrowly British/Irish or totally and utterly Oriental! Nothing in between except some course-work related American poets. I, the novice, bow to the will of the more enlightened ones in this group.

P.S: Sorry I couldn't vote. Had I voted, I would have definitely chosen Montale as I did not want to touch my copy of The Bell Jar.

[quasimodo1]

"cuttlefish, common name applied to cephalopod mollusks that have 10 tentacles, or arms, 8 of which have muscular suction cups on their inner surface and 2 that are longer and can shoot out for grasping prey, and a reduced internal shell enbedded in the enveloping mantle. The body is short, broad, and flattened. Cuttlefish are carnivorous and excellent at capturing prey with their arms.
Although good swimmers, they are not as fast as the related squids, but like the squids cuttlefish have lateral fins used as stabilizers and for steering and propulsion. They swim by jet propulsion, forcibly expelling water through a siphon. During the day they lie buried in the bottom of the ocean; at night they swim and hunt for food.

Except for the squid genus Loligo, cuttlefish have the best cephalopod eyes, which are highly complex. When disturbed, cuttlefish eject a cloud of dark brown ink from an ink sac for protection. The ink gland and ink sac are specializations of the rectal gland. The ink is composed mostly of melanin and has been used as the artist's pigment, sepia. All cuttlefish are dioecious, i.e., the sexes are separate.

The common, worldwide, deepwater cuttlefish, genus Spirula, is considered a "living fossil" because it possesses a remnant of the external shell of the ancient cephalopods. These cuttlefish have a small, coiled internal shell containing a bubble of gas (nitrogen), which serves as a float in the ocean. The European cuttlefish, Sepia officinalis, possesses a degenerate internal shell composed of lime, which is popularly called cuttlebone. Within the narrow spaces between the thin septa of the shell are fluid and gas (mostly nitrogen), which give the organism buoyancy. These cuttlefish are found in the Mediterranean and E Atlantic. The cuttlebone is used for pet birds as a source of lime salts. Sepia are able to undergo a complex of color changes ranging from pink to brown with varying stripes and spots, usually displayed when they are disturbed. The eggs, deposited singly and attached by a stalk to objects on the ocean bottom, are extremely large, up to .6 in. (15 mm) in diameter. The smallest cuttlefish, Idiosepius, inhabits tide pools and attains a length of .6 in. (15 mm). Cuttlefish are classified in the phylum Mollusca, class Cephalopoda, order Sepioidea." {from dictionary.com}

[Virgil]

Well, I ordered Cuttlefish. I should get it by the end of the week.

[Jozanny]

Well, I ordered Cuttlefish. I should get it by the end of the week.

I am not yet; if I am finicky about the quality of the literature I read, I am a terror when it comes to poetry, and Tate merited my money because of TNR's analysis of his modernism, and he had better measure up. I am thinking of ditching my Plath and I already have my signed Joel Oppenheimer on the auction block. Joel had that winsome homespun personality honed to a T on the stage, but when I looked into his eyes, he was an angry cold and dying old man who frightened me, and neither his work nor Judith Johnson's appreciation of him makes up for it.

I hate about 93% of the poems I read, including mine. Petrarch was onto something when she gleaned that my demands insist on triumph.

[quasimodo1]

Xenia I
by Eugenio Montale
(translated from the Italian by William Arrowsmith)

1
Dear little insect
nicknamed Mosca, who knows why,
this evening, when it was nearly dark,
while I was reading Deutero-Isaiah,
you reappeared at my side,
but without your glasses
you couldn’t see me,
and in the blur, without their glitter,
I didn’t know who you were.
2
Minus glasses and antennae,
poor insect, wingèd
only in imagination,
a beaten-up Bible and none
too plausible either, black night,
a flash of lightning, thunder, and then
not even the storm. Could it be
you left so soon, and without
a word? But it’s crazy, my thinking
you still had lips.
3
At the St. James in Paris I’ll have to ask for
a room for one. (They don’t like
single guests.) Ditto
in the fake Byzantium of your Venetian
hotel; and then, right off, hunting down
the girls at the switchboard,
your old pals; and then leaving again
the minute my three minutes are up,
and the wanting you back,
if only in one gesture,
one habit of yours.
4
We’d worked out a whistle for the world
beyond, a token of recognition.
Now I’m giving it a try, hoping
we’re all dead already and don’t know it.
5
I ’ve never figured out whether I
was your faithful dog with runny eyes
or you were mine.
To others you were a myopic little bug
bewildered by the twaddle
of high society. They were naïve,
those clever folk, never guessing
they were the butt of your humor:
that you could see them even in the dark,
unmasked by your infallible sixth sense,
your bat’s radar.
6
You never thought of leaving your mark
by writing prose or verse. This
was your charm—and later my self-revulsion.
It was what I dreaded too: that someday
you’d shove me back into the croaking
bog of “modern poets.”
{6 of 14 parts}

[stlukesguild]

Xenia I (there's a Xenia II as well) is from the collection Satura, first published in 1971.

[JBI]

Shall we perhaps create a new thread for the new discussion? I think this one is getting too long, and perhaps if we cut it now, we can make discussions easier to find, and perhaps keep up the discussion on older poets that we have discussed. Just a thought.

[Virgil]

Shall we perhaps create a new thread for the new discussion? I think this one is getting too long, and perhaps if we cut it now, we can make discussions easier to find, and perhaps keep up the discussion on older poets that we have discussed. Just a thought.

I asked Quasi that very question in a PM. I guess we could do another poet here. I don't think it makes a difference.

[Jozanny]

I am not sure what happened to Montale and his Cuttlefish Bones (clever post modern title, that) but I have not gotten down to Vine Street yet, where the free library sits like an absurd edifice, mocking neo-classicism more than honoring it in the breech. It isn't that I can't do it in the ailing Quickie frame. It is more my ailing frame that is the issue. I am under the weather, despite being the Big Sister who has taken up right where mom left off, taking care of her whining spoiled brats who cannot live within their means. It still throws me that I have to take care of them because I am cautious and frugal and still so strong in the middle age of my disability... I can't even begin to convey the irony of it to the rest of you without getting tooooooooooooooo personal, but in the interior weakness of my mind's indulging itself, I have Tate's Collected Poems, adding to the satisfaction of my personal library. Did not look at it yet, nor the introduction by Christopher Benfey.

Don't know Benfey.

What I wanted to add though, is I missed out getting to the analysis of Tate's modernism in bothTNR and The New Criterion in time, before they both went to archive, so if any of you do find such an analysis that I could look at without a paywall, it would delight me; not that I will not keep snooting the tubers on my own!

Now I have to go email my brother and plead patience while he waits for rescue, because I am nothing if not phlegm today; then I will zip down to the lobby mailbox.

I don't know what the issue is with some of you about the bookclub thread length, but I don't have any problem with continuing on.

[Virgil]

I am not sure what happened to Montale and his Cuttlefish Bones (clever post modern title, that) but I have not gotten down to Vine Street yet, where the free library sits like an absurd edifice, mocking neo-classicism more than honoring it in the breech. It isn't that I can't do it in the ailing Quickie frame. It is more my ailing frame that is the issue. I am under the weather, despite being the Big Sister who has taken up right where mom left off, taking care of her whining spoiled brats who cannot live within their means. It still throws me that I have to take care of them because I am cautious and frugal and still so strong in the middle age of my disability... I can't even begin to convey the irony of it to the rest of you without getting tooooooooooooooo personal, but in the interior weakness of my mind's indulging itself, I have Tate's Collected Poems, adding to the satisfaction of my personal library. Did not look at it yet, nor the introduction by Christopher Benfey.

Don't know Benfey.

What I wanted to add though, is I missed out getting to the analysis of Tate's modernism in bothTNR and The New Criterion in time, before they both went to archive, so if any of you do find such an analysis that I could look at with a paywall, it would delight me; not that I will not keep snooting the tubers on my own!

Now I have to go email my brother and plead patience while he waits for rescue, because I am nothing if not phlegm today; then I will zip down to the lobby mailbox.

I don't know what the issue is with some of you about the bookclub thread length, but I don't have and problem with continuing on.

Jozy, Quasi had a personal issue come up which would take him a few days. I'm still waiting for the book to come from amazon. I think StLukes was slated to pick the first poem.

I hope you feel better. I know it can be one of those days. I've been so busy at work that I'm pretty exhausted when I get home.