Just thought I'd pop in and say that I liked the Allan Tate poem; but I wonder why you guys always want to discuss modern poetry. Right now, I'm in the mood for Firdawsi's Shahnamah, Ovid's Tristia, Blake's Milton, Camoes' Os Lusiadas, or maybe something by John Suckling or Petrarch.
"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!
Avison is also a remarkable poet, as is Fred Wah. I think though, the difference between the two traditions is really that Canadian poetry doesn't really assemble figureheads as much, in the sense that there is no single papa bear to hold as the foundation. There also, despite what some critics like Margaret Atwood try to suggest, a "Canadian" voice that is used throughout the country, which makes Canadian poetry more like a series of several hundred voices, from different parts of the country, and different parts of the world.Originally Posted by quasimodo1
The League of Canadian poets put out actually a decent intro guide (though it deals mostly with mainstream Canadian poetry) a while back, for young people and teachers, which gets up until people born around 1940.
http://www.youngpoets.ca/?q=digital_...adian_poetry_0
It's interesting to read. The Bibliography at the end is very useful as well.
But yeah, the reason why it would seem Americans don't particularly know or understand Canadian poetry is because it doesn't have a coherent tradition, and doesn't try to have one. Of course, I think French Canadian poetry has a tradition, but Quebec seems to be its own country, despite the fact that referendum failed. Quebec in many ways is more of a country than Canada is - surely they have a coherent sense of who they are, and of culture and tradition. The country as a whole though is very regional. Newfoundlanders seem to have forged their own tradition, and I think the Maritimes did as well, but outside of their? Western Canada has something, and they certainly publish a great deal of great poetry and scholarship, but a sense of coherency is not possible. Ontario generally just has far too many voices to have any sense of tradition.
It's probably better this way. In the end, I much prefer to have a few great poems from many minor poets, than full works from a few major poets. Lets be honest, even the best poets only really write a handful of good poems, and I think the Hebrew/Greek tradition seems to put too much emphasis on the poet, and not the poem, whereas the Japanese Tradition, the way I understand it, for instance, puts more on the poem and less on the poet.
We're trying to keep it all English texts to avoid needing translations. Do you though, know of a translation of Camoes? I could only find a mediocre prose one from Penguin at the library, and I'm wondering if a good verse one exists. Either way though, if you take Blake for instance, the thread would end up disappearing onto the Blake subforum, whereas if you take a modern-contemporary poet, we can keep it out here in the open. I think that was the brains behind the focus at any rate, that those poets already have subforum available, whereas these ones really don't - at least, that is why the first discussion on Yeats failed, because it kind of disappeared.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/avison/bio.htmMargaret Avison, Biography
b. 1918 in Galt, Ontario. Infant and childhood years in Regina and Calgary (Sask. and Alta.). Educated in Ontario ( University of Toronto, 1936-40; M.A. 1963-5). Various daytime jobs, 1940-67, twice interrupted (8 months in Chicago on a Guggenheim Scholarship; two years' teaching at Scarborough College, University of Toronto: 1967-8). Conversion to Christian faith in early 1963. Late '63 till '85, family responsibilities. Worker in Evangel Hall '68-'73. For eight months ('73-'74) at the University of Western Ontario as Writer-in-Residence. Jobs '74-'78. Secretary, Mustard Seed Mission until retirement, '78-'86.
Continued here:
Stone's Secret
Margaret Avison
From: Sunblue. Hantsport: Lancelot Press, 1978. pp.21-2
Otter-smooth boulder
lies under rolling
black river-water
stilled among frozen
hills and the still unbreathed
blizzards aloft;
silently, icily, is probed
stone's secret.
Out there --past trace
of eyes, past these
and those memorial skies
dotting back signals from
men's made mathematics (we
delineators of curves and time who are
subject to these) --
out there, inaccessible
to grammar's language the
stones curve vastnesses,
cold or candescent
in the perceived
processional of space.
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpo...ison/poem3.htm
continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpo...ison/poem1.htm
Not the Sweet Cicely of Gerardes Herball
(i.e. Oriental Myrrh, not English Myrrh)
Margaret Avison
From: Winter Sun. London: Routledge, Kegan Paul, 1960. p.12-13
Myrrh, bitter myrrh, diagonal,
Divides my gardenless gardens
Incredibly as far as the eye reaches
In this falling terrain.
Low-curled in rams-horn thickets,
With hedge-solid purposefulness
It unscrolls, glistening,
Where else the stones are white,
Sky blue.
No beetles move. No birds pass over.
The stone house is cold.
The cement has crumbled from the steps.
The gardens here, or fields,
Are weedless, not from cultivation but from
Sour unfructifying November gutters,
From winds that bore no fennel seeds,
Finally, from a sun purifying, harsh, like
Sea-salt.
The stubbled grass, dragonfly-green,
Between the stones, was not so tended.
mild animals with round unsmiling heads
Cropped unprotested, unprotesting
(After the rind of ice
Wore off the collarbones of shallow shelving rock)
And went their ways.
General link to half a dozen of her poems, http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpo...ison/poems.htm
If I were to choose a volume, probably: http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Poems...683963&sr=8-18
or perhaps for a pricier option:
http://www.amazon.com/Always-Now-Col...ref=pd_sim_b_1
or
http://www.amazon.com/Always-Now-Col...ref=pd_sim_b_3
or
http://www.amazon.com/Always-Now-Col...ref=pd_sim_b_3
I've just been using this one over at sacred-texts http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/lus/index.htm . I can't read the original Portugese but it looks alright.
I don't think we have a Firdawsi forum, or one for Camoes, Ovid, or Petrarch for that matter. If the plan were to stay within the English language then we've already strayed with Pasternak and Montale.
"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!
"Blake's Milton was a lengthy, ambitious project close to his heart. Long an admirer of Milton and Paradise Lost,
Blake in this work penned both a paean to Milton and a criticism of Milton's religious stance in Paradise Lost.
Although generally favorable to Milton, the poem chastises the poet for advocating reason over inspiration and for
denigrating sex as a base impulse.
To announce his purpose and his affinity with Milton, Blake appends Milton's famous phrase to his title page as an
explanation of his own purpose: "To justify the ways of God to men." In Blake's poem, Milton returns to earth a
hundred years after his death as a Christ-like figure, his coming prepared by Los, the personification of the
creative impulse. By his return, Milton is poised to destroy both Urizen, the symbol of restrictive Reason, and
Satan, the chief symbol of society's corruption.
Blake called Milton his "Grand Poem" and originally intended an epic of twelve books to rival Paradise Lost. However,
he completed only two books.
In the illustration reproduced here, Blake clearly depicts Milton in a Christ-like image." -----------------------
-MILTON: A POEM IN TWO BOOKS
1804
-------------- http://library.uncg.edu/depts/specco...ke/milton.html
Read the end of the Poetry 3 club. The idea was that translations, as have been seen the past two times, created too many complications. As it is, Firdawsi is probably impossible to get in an unabridged form for cheap, and his sheer length perhaps makes him an impossible discussion subject for a book club. Really though, there isn't a Petrarch forum? There should be - I'm sure there are Petrarch translations going back to the Renaissance. And I'm pretty sure there is an Ovid forum. The problem is, if these things go on to the subforum, they kind of become limited.
Well... if we're tossing the old guys into the mix I'm certainly always up for Blake... and I'd throw Thomas Traherne into the mix as well.
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
http://stlukesguild.tumblr.com/
John Suckling 1609-1642 --- http://www.luminarium.org/sevenlit/suckling/ --- " ’T is expectation makes a
blessing dear;
Heaven were not heaven if we knew what it were."
Against Fruition.
http://www.accd.edu/Sac/english/bailey/traherne.htm --- The Thomas Traherne Page
( 1637 - 1674 )
Major Works
Alan Bradford has edited Selected Poems and Prose for Penguin, 1991.
Roman Forgeries ( 1673 ).
Christian Ethicks ( 1675 ).
Centuries. Edited by Bertram Dobell, 1908. Edited by H. M. Margoliouth. Oxford, 1958. Reprinted by Morehouse, 1985.
Poetical Works. Edited by Gladys I. Wade, 1932.
"News" from Bartleby.
Six Poems On Line
About Traherne
Gladys I. Wade, Thomas Traherne. Princeton, 1944; 1946.
http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/lus/index.htm --- The Lusiad
by Luis de Camõens
trans. by William Julius Mickle
[1776, edition of 1877] -------------------------------------- Columbus was a failure.
He utterly failed to accomplish what NASA would call his 'mission profile,' that is, to find a practical trade route
to India. Of course, he did get the biggest consolation prize in history...
Vasco da Gama, who sailed from Portugal in 1498, however, succeeded in achieving Columbus' goal. He rounded the Cape
of Good Hope and reached India. This accomplishment was memorialized shortly thereafter by this epic poem written by
a Portuguese sailor, Luis de Camõens. Unless you were raised speaking Portuguese, it is unlikely you've heard of
Camõens. However, if you were, you probably already know that he's considered the Portuguese Shakespeare, and the
Lusiads the Portuguese national epic.
Although there have been several attempts to translate the Lusiads into English, none have been very successful until
the 20th century. Notably, Richard Burton attempted a translation, but it has been universally criticized. Mickle's
translation is provided here, not because it is of exceptional literary quality, but because it is in the public
domain, and better than some of the rest. If you would like to read this poem casually, I recommend a modern
translation such as Landeg White's (see box on right), or William Atkinsons' prose translation of 1972 (in the
Penguin Classics).
Mickle employs ABAB couplets, where the original whereas Camõens used ottava rima, an ABABABCC form. He also took a
few liberties with the text. In the most egregious case, he inserts a 300 line naval engagement which is not found in
the original; he also omits an entire section where de Gama engages in questionable conduct. However, the editor of
this, the 1877 edition, indicates these sections. Mickle's footnotes are worth consulting for the wealth of
information on the classical references, as well as Portuguese history. However, some of his annotations must be
taken with a grain of salt, particularly his five page footnote in book X where he deprecates Chinese culture, for no
particular reason.
That said, Mickle is not entirely unreadable, and a thorough reading of this edition along with the apparatus is wel
If we are including a poetry sample for each of our submissions here is one for Petrarch. It is in the public domain and can be found here. http://www.archive.org/stream/secret...arch00milluoft
And what is life itself? A space of toil,
A wrestling, a stage-play, a labyrinth
Of errors, or a game of mountebanks,
A desert, a morass, a land of briers,
An unploughed valley, or a crest unclomb:
Sombre its caves, and what wild beasts dwell there!
There is the stream of tears, the sea of woes,
Rest ever anxious, labour all for naught,
Hope without fruit, false pleasure but true pain,
Full breadth of poverty but empty wealth,
Inglorious honour, waste of all desire,
Adversity with never-stayned complaint,
The sting in all enjoyment, and the sweet,
Alas, not seldom bitter; a brief halt
At wayside inns; a dirty prison; a ship
Without a rudder; a blind man unled;
A stormy sea, a dangerous coast, a port
All doubtful,--with no dearth of monstrous wreck;
Hate, lust, and anger, virtue aye assumed,
Successful fraud labelled with honour's name,
Innocence scoffed at, faith held up to scorn,
And puffed-up science that no science is;
A land of ghosts and spectres, 'neath the reign
Of Lucifer and demons; or a sleep
Death ends and every dream. But yet some way
Remains, thank heaven, to good life, and hereafter
Unto the eternal.
And for Firdawsi, a complete translation which is in the public domain and far superior to that of Dick Davis' prose can be found at http://www.archive.org/stream/shahnama01firduoft .
----------"My lord! consider how time passeth
Like wind above us. Why should wise men fret?
It withereth the cheek of cercis-bloom,
It darkeneth the radiant spirit's eyes;
It is at first a gain and then a pain,
And when the pain is done we pass away.
Since then our couch is dust, our pillow brick,
Why plant to-day a tree whose roots will ever
Be drinking blood, whose fruit will be revenge?
The earth hath seen and will see many lords
With scimitar and throne and signet-ring
Like us; but they who wore the crown of old
Made not a habit of revenge. I too,
The king permitting, will not live in ill.
I want not crown and throne. I will approach
My brothers in all haste and unattended,
And say 'My lords, dear as my soul and body!
Forbear your anger and abandon strife:
strife is unlovely in religious men.
Why set your hopes so much upon this world?
How ill it used Jamshid who passed away
At last, and lost the crown and throne and girdle!
And you and I at last must share his lot.
Live we in joy together and thus safe
From foes.' I will convert their vengeful hearts:
What better vengeance can I take than that?"
The English of John Suckling's poem Song is easily found.
Why so pale and wan fond lover?
Prithee why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prithee why so pale?
Why so dull and mute young sinner?
Prithee why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do't?
Prithee why so mute?
Quit, quit for shame, this will not move,
This cannot take her;
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her;
The devil take her.
"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!
Poets who have made the preliminary list include: William Matthews, Allen Tate, Medbh McGuckian, Susan Goyette, Margaret Allison, Fred Wah, Geofrey Hill, Anne carson, Anthony Hecht, William Blake, John Suckling, Thomas Traherne, Luis de Camoens (perhaps not included because he's in translation). Many other participants still need to add their choices. q1
The Writing philosophy of Fred Wah:
http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/wah/write.htmOne makes (the) difference.
To say: "I don't undertand what this means," is, at least, to recognize that "this" means. The problem is that meaning is not a totality of sameness and predictability. Within each word, each sentence, meaning has slipped a little out of sight and all we have are traces, shadows, still warm ashes. The meaning available from language goes beyond the actual instance of this word, that word. A text is a place where a labyrinth of continually revealing meanings are available, a place that offers more possibility than we can be sure we know, sometimes more than we want to know. It isn't a container, static and apparent. Rather, it is noisy, frequently illegible. Reading into meaning starts with a questioning glance, a seemingly obvious doubloon on a mast. The multiplicity can be read, should be read, even performed. But then again, perhaps meaning is intransitive and unreadable, only meant to be made. No sooner do we name meaning than it seems to dissipate. As a sure thing, it eludes us. It arouses us to attempt an understanding, to interpret. But this is usually unsatisfying since whatever direction we approach from only leads us to suspect there is no one direction. No single meaning is the right one because no "right ones" stand still long enough to get caught. But because we do not know does not mean we are lost. Something that is strangely familiar, not quite what we expect, but familiar, is present. That quick little gasp in the daydream, a sudden sigh of recognition, a little sock of baby breath. Writing into meaning starts at the white page, nothing but intention. This initial blinding clarity needs to be disrupted before we're tricked into settling for a staged and diluted paradigm of the "real," the good old familiar, inherited, understandable, unmistakable lucidity of phrase that feels safe and sure, a simple sentence, just-like-the-last-time-sentence. One makes (the) difference. Meaning generates and amplifies itself, beyond itself, but never forgets; fragments of its memory and its potency exceed itself with meaning full of desire and can only be found hiding between the words and lines and in a margin large enough for further thought, music at the heart of thinking, go ahead.
Biography:
Fred Wah was born in Swift Current, Saskatchewan in 1939, but he grew up in the West Kootenay region of British Columbia. He studied music and English literature at the University of British Columbia in the early 1960's where he was one of the founding editors of the poetry newsletter TISH. After graduate work in literature and linguistics at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and the State University of New York at Buffalo, he returned to the Kootenays in the late 1960's where he taught at Selkirk College and was the founding coordinator of the writing program at David Thompson University Centre. He now teaches at the University of Calgary. He has been editorially involved with a number of literary magazines over the years, such as Open Letter and West Coast Line. He has published seventeen books of poetry. [....snip...]
[/quote]
from: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/wah/bio.htm
Untitled by Fred Wah:
continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/wah/poem1.htmUntitled
IN THE DIAMOND, AT THE END OF A
long green vinyl aisle between booths of chrome, Naugahyde, and Formica, are two large swinging wooden doors, each with a round hatch of face-sized window. Those kitchen doors can be kicked with such a slap they're heard all the way up to the soda fountain. On the other side of the doors, hardly audible to the customers, echoes a jargon of curses, jokes and cryptic orders. Stack a hots! Half a dozen fry! Hot beef san! Fingers and tongues all over the place jibe and swear You mucka high!—Thloong you! And outside, running through and around the town, the creeks flow down to the lake with, maybe, a spring thaw. And the prairie sun over the mountains to the east, over my family's shoulders. The journal journey tilts tight-fisted through the gutter of the book, avoiding a place to start—or end. Maps don't have beginnings, just edges. Some frayed and hazy margin of possibility, absence, gap. Shouts in the kitchen. Fish an! Side a fries! Over easy! On brown! I pick up an order and turn, back through the doors, whap! My foot registers more than its own imprint, starts to read the stain of memory.
Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/wah/poem3.htmMusic at the Heart of Thinking Ninety-four
This is no mass synapse I'm after and I've known awhile now being lost is as simple as sitting on a log but the fumble jerked mystique clouds grabbing as the staked mistake or stacked and treasured garbage belongs familiar to a gardened world disturbed as heat
Continued here: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/wah/poem6.htmHow to Hunt
Colour it brown
think about it
ahead of time
think about it
afterwards
listen to you
how alone you are
sitting on a log
in the forest
look at it about to happen
completely in your mind
and the world
all the trees
even the sky
size
Half a dozen poems: http://www.library.utoronto.ca/canpoetry/wah/poems.htm
From Lien Chao, Beyond Silence, "A Discursive Strategy in Chinese Canadian Poetry", 131-134, 1997, TSAR Toronto.The subject matter of identity is also explored by Fred Wah as a recurrent topic in his prose poems written over several decades. Among Wah's dozen poetry collections... The p[ening poem of Waiting For Saskatchewan, starting with the title line, begins a chain of Wah's frequently-used signifier, foregrounding his mixed origins and family genealogy in composition:
waiting for saksatchewan
and the origins of grandparents countries places converged
europe asia railroads carpenters nailed grain elevators
he built on the street
and him cafes namely the "elite" or Center
The beginning of the poem illustrates Wah's poetic style of using fewer punctuations signs and more noun parallels. Wah only uses one set of quotation marks, a few commas, and some captialization in this poem. He parallels his nouns to each other, such as "Origins grandparents countries places" and "europe asia railroads carpenters." Without using verbs regularly to designate the relationship between the nouns as either subject or object, Wah positions the parallelled nouns as equal entitites in the line. Thus, rather than creating a traditional syntactic order of subject + verb + object, Wah's parallel nouns and run on lines produces a nonhierarchical relationship among the words, a paratactic sentence.
..............
The search for his "genetic 'bag'" as a Eurasian leads the poet to take a physical journey to China. Grasp the Sparrow's Trail is a travel diary written during Wah's trip to mainland China via Japan, Taiwan, and Hong Kong in search of his family's "bones." Each journal entry consists of two parts: an italicized prose passage recording the daily travel agenda and a poetic passage printed in normal font. This format itself embeds and embodies different dialogues: dialogues between the fonts, between the travelers (his wife Pauline, pp. 37, 38, 54), between the physical and psychological journeys, and between prose and poetry. While the poet's search for his genealogical roots in Canton is recieved doubtfully by the Chinese, since a Eurasian is not considered a Chinese, his mental dialogue with his father continues during the trip:
So what have I got going besides this "father" list?... I've misplaced the family information my mother gave me so I can't check out actual possible connections still here in the Canton region. I mention this to the guides and the others in our tour group, tell them my father was sent here as a child to be raised and educated by his Chinese relatives.
you were part Chinese. I tell them
They look at me. I'm pulling their leg.
So I'm Chinese too and that's why my name is Wah.
They don't really believe me. That's o.k.
When you're not "pure" you just make it up (43)
...
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