What is poetry?

[Kyriakos]

The Albatross, By Charles Baudelaire
Translation by Eli Siegel

Often, to amuse themselves the men of the crew
Lay hold of the albatross, vast birds of the seas-
Who follow, sluggish companions of the voyage,
The ship gliding on the bitter gulfs.

Hardly have they placed them on the planks,
Than these kings of the azure, clumsy and shameful,
Let, piteously, their great wings in white,
Like oars, drag at their sides.

This winged traveler, how he is awkward and weak!
He, lately so handsome, how comic he is and uncomely!
Someone bothers his beak with a short pipe,
Another imitates, limping, the ill thing that flew!

The poet resembles the prince of the clouds
Who is friendly to the tempest and laughs at the bowman;
Banished to ground in the midst of hootings,
His wings, those of a giant, hinder him from walking.



I love this poem in the greek translation i have

 

[holy king]

how to be a great writer
by Charles Bukowski

you've got to f*** a great many women
beautiful women
and write a few decent love poems.

and don't worry about age
and/or freshly-arrived talents.

just drink more beer
more and more beer

and attend the racetrack at least once a
week

and win
if possible

learning to win is hard -
any slob can be a good loser.

and don't forget your Brahms
and your Bach and your
beer.

don't overexercise.

sleep until noon.

avoid credit cards
or paying for anything on
time.

remember that there isn't a piece of ass
in this world worth over $50
(in 1977).

and if you have the ability to love
love yourself first
but always be aware of the possibility of
total defeat
whether the reason for that defeat
seems right or wrong -

an early taste of death is not necessarily
a bad thing.

stay out of churches and bars and museums,
and like the spider be
patient -
time is everybody's cross,
plus
exile
defeat
treachery

all that dross.

stay with the beer.

beer is continuous blood.

a continuous lover.

get a large typewriter
and as the footsteps go up and down
outside your window

hit that thing
hit it hard

make it a heavyweight fight

make it the bull when he first charges in

and remember the old dogs
who fought so well:
Hemingway, Celine, Dostoevsky, Hamsun.

If you think they didn't go crazy
in tiny rooms
just like you're doing now

without women
without food
without hope

then you're not ready.

drink more beer.
there's time.
and if there's not
that's all right
too.

 

[Kyriakos]

This excrement could only be published in a country with no literary tradition to speak of...

 

[holy king]

This excrement could only be published in a country with no literary tradition to speak of...

 

[Agent327]

The Albatross, By Charles Baudelaire
Translation by Eli Siegel [...] I love this poem in the greek translation i have

It's pretty fair in English translation as well.

As far as Bukowski goes, he does a better job at describing his own aspirations than those of great writers, I fear. (The most that lingers is the repitional mention of beer.) Indeed, Baudelaire did a better job with his albatross analogy, I must say.

 

[Kyriakos]

Another poem taken from the Cavafy site.

In the original greek it rhymes, and it is one of my favourites

The Walls

With no consideration, no pity, no shame,
they have built walls around me, thick and high.
And now I sit here feeling hopeless.
I can’t think of anything else: this fate gnaws my mind—
because I had so much to do outside.
When they were building the walls, how could I not have noticed!
But I never heard the builders, not a sound.
Imperceptibly they have closed me off from the outside world.

Τα τείχη

Χωρίς περίσκεψιν, χωρίς λύπην, χωρίς αιδώ
μεγάλα κ’ υψηλά τριγύρω μου έκτισαν τείχη.

Και κάθομαι και απελπίζομαι τώρα εδώ.
Άλλο δεν σκέπτομαι: τον νουν μου τρώγει αυτή η τύχη·

διότι πράγματα πολλά έξω να κάμω είχον.
A όταν έκτιζαν τα τείχη πώς να μην προσέξω.

Aλλά δεν άκουσα ποτέ κρότον κτιστών ή ήχον.
Aνεπαισθήτως μ’ έκλεισαν από τον κόσμον έξω.

 

[Fifty]

This excrement could only be published in a country with no literary tradition to speak of...

This post could only be posted by a pseudointellectual jerkoff who is woefully not well-read if he believes what he said above.


Dark theme poll XXVXVXVXVXIII:

What would be more nightmarish, to be as annoying as varwnos or to be as bad of a writer as varwnos?

 

[Kyriakos]

Fifty, you are an idiot. I hope you are reported. I dont mind being reported for showing such an obvious truth

 

[Fifty]

Incorrect! You are the one who is an idiot! You obviously don't read much other than crappy horror novels. No wonder you are such a bad writer, you should try reading real literature.

BTW I have an idea for a horror story: This guy wants really really bad to be an artistic writer type but he's devoid of all talent so he deludes himself into thinking he doesn't suck so he can cope with the massive gap between his aspirations and his abilities. HORRIFYING!

 

[Merkinball]

Fifty, you are an idiot. I hope you are reported. I dont mind being reported for showing such an obvious truth

Oh man! You TOTALLY burned him! Like, WOW MAN! That's a totally awesome burn man! Even you get reported and infracted, I still give you mad props bro!

 

[Agent327]

Kindly refrain from such emotional outbursts, gentlemen; this is a poetry thread.

And Varwnos, thanks again. I know the poem well; it translates beautifully in my language.

 

[Kyriakos]

You are right Jeelen, i am sorry for using such language in your thread. Some people are too small and one shouldnt bother with them
I am happy you like the poem

 

[Squonk]

Hatred
by W. Szymborska
(translation I found in the net)



Look, how spry she still is,
how well she holds up:
hatred, in our century.
How lithely she takes high hurdles.
How easy for her to pounce, to seize.



She is not like the other feelings.
At once older and younger than they.
She alone gives birth to causes
which rouse her to life.
If she sleeps, it's never for eternity.
Insomnia doesn't take away but gives her strength.



Religion or no religion
-- as long as she's in the running
Motherland or no-man's land
-- as long as she's in the race.
Even justice suffices at first.
After that she speeds off on her own
Hatred. Hatred.
The grimace of love's ecstasy
twists her face.



Oh, those other feelings,

so sickly and sluggish.
Since when could brotherhood
count on milling crowds?
Was compassion ever first across the finish line?
How many followers does doubt command?
Only hatred commands, for hatred knows her stuff.


Smart, able, hard working.
Need we say how many songs she has written.
How many pages of history she has numbered.
How many human carpets she has unrolled,
over how many plazas and stadiums.



Let's be honest:
Hatred can create beauty.
Marvelous are her fire-glows, in deep night.
Clouds of smoke most beautiful, in rosy dawn.
It's hard to deny ruins their pathos
and not to see bawdy humor
in the stout column lording it over them.



She is a master of contrast

between clatter and silence,

red blood and white snow.
Above all the image of a clean-shaven torturer
standing over his defiled victim
never bores her.


She is always ready for new tasks.
If she has to wait, she waits.
They say hatred is blind. Blind?
With eyes sharp as a sniper's,
she looks bravely into the future
-- she alone.


@@@@@@@@@@

It isn't completely precise translation, but it's OK

 

[Penelope]

IX. On moonlit heath and lonesome bank

ON moonlit heath and lonesome bank
The sheep beside me graze;
And yon the gallows used to clank
Fast by the four cross ways.

A careless shepherd once would keep
The flocks by moonlight there, 1
And high amongst the glimmering sheep
The dead man stood on air.

They hang us now in Shrewsbury jail:
The whistles blow forlorn,
And trains all night groan on the rail
To men that die at morn.

There sleeps in Shrewsbury jail to-night,
Or wakes, as may betide,
A better lad, if things went right,
Than most that sleep outside.

And naked to the hangman’s noose
The morning clocks will ring
A neck God made for other use
Than strangling in a string.

And sharp the link of life will snap,
And dead on air will stand
Heels that held up as straight a chap
As treads upon the land.

So here I ’ll watch the night and wait
To see the morning shine,
When he will hear the stroke of eight
And not the stroke of nine;

And wish my friend as sound a sleep
As lads’ I did not know,
That shepherded the moonlit sheep
A hundred years ago.

​

Line 6: Hanging in chains was called keeping sheep by moonlight.

 

[Iron59]

I iz a LOLcat!
-Me

I iz a LOLcat
I liek to mek u lauf an stuf liek dat
I evin hab mah own wey ov speeking
An I liek 2 maek pics 2 maek u start laufing

 

[Agent327]

I fail to see how this would qualify as poetry, seeing as it hardly differs from your other posts so far...

Anyway, thank you Squonk and Penelope. I have a selection of poems by Szymborska translated in Dutch, but hadn't quoted from it yet - and this one isn't in it. (And I see I need to update the references in the OP soon.)

Keep it up!

 

[Japanrocks12]

Settle down boys and girls, enjoy some Theodore Roethke:

Moss-Gathering
To loosen with all ten fingers held wide and limber
And lift up a patch, dark-green, the kind for lining cemetery baskets,
Thick and cushiony, like an old-fashioned doormat,
The crumbling small hollow sticks on the underside mixed with roots,
And wintergreen berries and leaves still stuck to the top,—
That was moss-gathering.
But something always went out of me when I dug loose those carpets
Of green, or plunged to my elbows in the spongy yellowish moss of the marshes:
And afterwards I always felt mean, jogging back over the logging road,
As if I had broken the natural order of things in that swampland;
Disturbed some rhythm, old and of vast importance,
By pulling off flesh from the living planet;
As if I had committed, against the whole scheme of life, a desecration.

The Waking

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me, so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

MY PAPA'S WALTZ

The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.

We romped until the pans
Slid from the kitchen shelf;
My mother's countenance
Could not unfrown itself.

The hand that held my wrist
Was battered on one knuckle;
At every step you missed
My right ear scraped a buckle.

You beat time on my head
With a palm caked hard by dirt,
Then waltzed me off to bed
Still clinging to your shirt.

 

[Iron59]

I fail to see how this would qualify as poetry, seeing as it hardly differs from your other posts so far...

Anyway, thank you Squonk and Penelope. I have a selection of poems by Szymborska translated in Dutch, but hadn't quoted from it yet - and this one isn't in it. (And I see I need to update the references in the OP soon.)

Keep it up!

You talking about me?

 

[Kyriakos]

We need more poems

 

[Kyriakos]

Nicolaus Lenau, The three horsemen (my translation, from the greek. Im not really happy with the translation, but i could not find any online)

Since the final battle also was lost,
three horsemen return on their own.

From deep wounds the blood is flowing,
hot, the horse bows to inhale it.

The blood from the saddle of the rider,
and from the rein has reached the ground.

Slowly the horse moves on,
but the blood oozes and spawns.

The three horsemen glance at each other,
and say with a deep sigh:

"By a daughter i am fondly loved,
which is why now dying i am in sorrow"

"I have plently of property, houses, forests,
and the night shall cover me so prematurely"

"I have nothing apart from the God of the world,
but how much am i frightened by my death!"

And as the horses carry on going,
three crows are flying above them.

They share them, each one crowing:
"The two are yours- and the third mine"