LightSpectra
me autem minui
"Battle Hymn of the Republic" by Julia Ward Howe is the most utterly perfect poem ever composed. Nothing will ever surpass it.
What is poetry?
- Thread starter Agent327
- Start date
I'm afraid that's a bit biased; as a poem it is not very powerful nor very good. I suppose it's because it's the battle hymn of the Republic that people think it's great. And because it's a marching song. Which makes me wonder: is there actually a patriotic song or hymn that is a good poem? The reason people like such poetic inspirations seems to be rather for reasons of patriotism, camaraderie or similar feelings than of poetic quality.
Also, I was quite unaware that a trainwreck could inspire such poetry...
Also, I was quite unaware that a trainwreck could inspire such poetry...
aelf
Ashen One
Which is the trainwreck?
aelf
Ashen One
Oh, I was wondering whether you meant the verse or the subject of the verse.
Not so. Continuing with some samples of J.H. Leopold, often considered the best Dutch poet, so my translations of his Omar Khayyam's translations in all likelihood won't do him justice.
From the Rubayat:
I
Where lilac tulips, roses red be fair
there sometimes royal blood has flown
and beneath dark violets lies
a woman's head, encased in its ebony hair.
III
'I am the flower Yussuf; my golden mouth
shows you the jewel of my high state'
whispers the rose, and I: 'Give another sign.'
'Bloodcoloured is my shining robe.'
IV
A thousand days extinguished their light
in a thousand nights here. Ere thy foot be light
to this dull, shineless dust; 't was once
the beaming eye of a woman perhaps.
From the Rubayat:
I
Where lilac tulips, roses red be fair
there sometimes royal blood has flown
and beneath dark violets lies
a woman's head, encased in its ebony hair.
III
'I am the flower Yussuf; my golden mouth
shows you the jewel of my high state'
whispers the rose, and I: 'Give another sign.'
'Bloodcoloured is my shining robe.'
IV
A thousand days extinguished their light
in a thousand nights here. Ere thy foot be light
to this dull, shineless dust; 't was once
the beaming eye of a woman perhaps.
azzaman333
meh
Today I know
Reality is here
Open your mind
Lose yourself
Let it all go.
Reality is here
Open your mind
Lose yourself
Let it all go.
Returning to Leopardi for a minute, I found an interesting page on the problems of translating poetry, using Leopardi's L'infinito as an example: http://www.textetc.com/workshop/wt-leopardi-1.html. Apart from an analysis of the poem it includes various translations by known authors.
I realized somewhat belatedly that people may have some difficulty with Galas' reading in that video (she could probably pass off as a quebecois), but if you watch the video on youtube, you may notice that the poster included a translation of sorts of the actual wording. 
Japanrocks12
tired of being a man
Here's a poem on my list of "Poems that are better than 'The Battle Hymn of the Republic'"
"Mother to Son"
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
Langston Hughes
"Mother to Son"
Well, son, I'll tell you:
Life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
It's had tacks in it,
And splinters,
And boards torn up,
And places with no carpet on the floor --
Bare.
But all the time
I'se been a-climbin' on,
And reachin' landin's,
And turnin' corners,
And sometimes goin' in the dark
Where there ain't been no light.
So boy, don't you turn back.
Don't you set down on the steps
'Cause you finds it's kinder hard.
Don't you fall now --
For I'se still goin', honey,
I'se still climbin',
And life for me ain't been no crystal stair.
Langston Hughes
Thank you. For a long time all I knew by Langston Hughes was Let America be America again, which featured in an anthology of Black American literature. More poems by Hughes can be found here: http://famouspoetsandpoems.com/poets/langston_hughes/poems. A short biography and a quite extensive bibliography (he also wrote prose and drama) can be found here: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/83
An interesting review of Charles Bernstein was published in the NYT Sunday Book Review:
Poet and Anti-Poet
Charles Bernstein
At a reading I attended in the Smith College science lecture hall a few years ago, Charles Bernstein, famous as a poet and anti-poet, pointed to the giant poster on the wall behind him and said, “I want to thank the Poetry Center for putting up my poem ‘The Periodic Table of the Elements.’ ” He then proceeded to give a mock-dramatic rendition of the symbols, left to right, down the page. “H, He, Li, Be!” he panted, growled and spluttered. “Why!?” he complained when he got to yttrium (Y). “I!” he declared solemnly for iodine, as if toasting his own ego. He slowed down, sped up. “No!” he bellowed for nobelium, then finally whispered “Lr,” the last chemical symbol. He turned to face the audience. “I’ve always wondered if I should have ended with ‘No’ rather than putting that ‘Lr’ on the end. I think it was a mistake. I think it would have been more emphatic with the negation.” This was the funniest, most impromptu-brilliant, serious moment I’ve ever witnessed at a poetry reading — and very much about sound, language, expression and communication.
With “All the Whiskey in Heaven,” his first book not published by a university or independent press, Bernstein takes his place in the mainstream of American poetry, the very “Official Verse Culture” he’s attacked entertainingly for years — a fate awaiting all our best outsiders. Bernstein is identified with the Language poets, who emerged in the 1970s. Interested in the materiality of language, they are politically left, theoretically grounded and deeply suspicious of the lyric “I” that speaks from the heart in traditional poems without examining its own existence in a sociopolitical power structure. Their work is often most subversive when both joining and satirizing that weary old, dreary old genre, poetry about poetry. Early Bernstein can be opaque, annoying those who see difficulty as elitist and who want poetry to be cuddly and educational. But everyone should love the later Bernstein, a writer who is accessible, enormously witty, often joyful — and even more evilly subversive.
This selection of Bernstein’s work doesn’t neglect his early experiments. “Lift Off,” apparently transcribed from a typewriter correction tape, begins “HH/ ie,s obVrsxr;atjrn dugh seineopcv i iibalfmgmMw.” A sympathetic reader appreciates the grunting “dugh,” the fortuitous trip to Paris implied by “seine,” the broken “s ob,” the loneliness of the lowercase “i.” This is a conceptual poem — you may be more excited to know it exists than to read through it.
A hilarious, addictive untitled series of sentences sounds cribbed from TV Guide: “Comradery turns to rivalry when 12 medical students learn that only seven of them will be admitted to the hospital. . . . Henrietta Hippo believes she can predict the future by reading the letters in her alphabet soup.” No mere joke, this prose poem gets at the strange dream-normalcy of television, the absurdity of narrative, the tragicomedy of human desire.
“Of Time and the Line” combines prosodic theory, stand-up comedy, and personal and political history by considering uses of the word “line”: George Burns and Henny Youngman punch lines, Bernstein’s father’s “line of ladies’ dresses,” his mother’s hemline, long lines in Russia, soup lines in the United States, Chairman Mao’s political line, “abandoned (most- / ly) for the East-West line of malarkey / so popular in these parts.” In all, there are 40 indefatigably punning, quasi-blank-verse lines — cold war references, hammy delivery, satire of sentimental family history. The sillier Bernstein gets, the more it’s a sign of the poem’s seriousness:
Nowadays, you can often spot a work
of poetry by whether it’s in lines
or no; if it’s in prose, there’s a good chance
it’s a poem.
“Thank You for Saying Thank You” lampoons critics of difficult poetry, beginning, “This is a totally / accessible poem,” satirizing the claims built into certain kinds of lyric poetry and describing itself into existence: “It fully expresses / the feelings of the / author: my feelings, / the person speaking / to you now.” Some claims are bald falsehoods:
It
celebrates the
triumph of the
human imagination
amidst pitfalls &
calamities.
The poem is gleefully about nothing but itself, an extremely funny, cruel, ultimately profound comment on poetic falsification, and what poems can and should and cannot do.
When Bernstein arrives at his own style of lyric beauty, his means are slant. “A Test of Poetry” is a gorgeous catechism of questions, but no answers, posed by a translator to the author of a poem we get only in fragments:
What do you mean by rashes of ash? Is industry
systematic work, assiduous activity, or ownership
of factories? Is ripple agitate lightly? Are
we tossed in tune when we write poems? And
what or who emboss with gloss insignias of air?
This riveting poem, more than five pages long, does everything a lyric aims to do — it creates linguistic excitement, mystery and emotion — without resorting to tiresome epiphanies.
The prose poem “Report From Liberty Street” is one of the few poetic responses to 9/11 to avoid false consolation and the taint of catastrophe-exploitation. “I took a walk on Liberty Street today. Only it was not the same place as I had known before,” the poet reports from Lower Manhattan. He narrates what he sees, thinks and hears, repeating at intervals the chilling refrain, “They thought they were going to heaven.” Because Battery Park is closed, “it’s impossible to get to the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.” Meanwhile, “At Pier A on the Battery, there are two giant Apple ‘Think Different’ ads with blown-up pictures of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, who preside over the scene with unflinching incomprehension.”
“Unflinching incomprehension” seems the right phrase for the way Americans watched the events of 9/11, and also for our country’s simplistic, war-justifying stance toward complicated geopolitics. The hijackers are “Not cowards. Men of principle” but “No one deserves to die this way. I think that goes without saying and yet I feel compelled to say it.” How to respond to the events is on Bernstein’s mind. He invokes “Ozymandias,” Shelley’s sonnet about the remains of the statue of an ancient ruler, borrowing and corrupting a phrase from Shelley, “These vast and hollow trunks of steel,” to describe the ruins of the World Trade Center.
Toward the poem’s end, Bernstein says, “The question isn’t is art up to this but what else is art for?” I can think of a lot of things art might be for, including — taking a cue from “All the Whiskey in Heaven” — documentation, commemoration, celebration, satire, theory mongering, genuine sentiment. But Bernstein refuses the responsibility of having the last word on this century’s most vicious and problematic tragedy, instead quoting “Ozymandias” again with tremendous resonance to end his own poem: “The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
I’m not sure whether art is up to the task of dealing with 9/11 and its aftermath. I do know that this calculating, improvisatory, essential poet won’t tell you the truth wrapped up in a neat little package. He might show it to you when you’re least expecting it.
Daisy Fried’s most recent book of poems is “My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again.”
Here's Charles Bernstein’s Web Site
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/books/review/Fried-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3
Poet and Anti-Poet
Charles Bernstein
At a reading I attended in the Smith College science lecture hall a few years ago, Charles Bernstein, famous as a poet and anti-poet, pointed to the giant poster on the wall behind him and said, “I want to thank the Poetry Center for putting up my poem ‘The Periodic Table of the Elements.’ ” He then proceeded to give a mock-dramatic rendition of the symbols, left to right, down the page. “H, He, Li, Be!” he panted, growled and spluttered. “Why!?” he complained when he got to yttrium (Y). “I!” he declared solemnly for iodine, as if toasting his own ego. He slowed down, sped up. “No!” he bellowed for nobelium, then finally whispered “Lr,” the last chemical symbol. He turned to face the audience. “I’ve always wondered if I should have ended with ‘No’ rather than putting that ‘Lr’ on the end. I think it was a mistake. I think it would have been more emphatic with the negation.” This was the funniest, most impromptu-brilliant, serious moment I’ve ever witnessed at a poetry reading — and very much about sound, language, expression and communication.
With “All the Whiskey in Heaven,” his first book not published by a university or independent press, Bernstein takes his place in the mainstream of American poetry, the very “Official Verse Culture” he’s attacked entertainingly for years — a fate awaiting all our best outsiders. Bernstein is identified with the Language poets, who emerged in the 1970s. Interested in the materiality of language, they are politically left, theoretically grounded and deeply suspicious of the lyric “I” that speaks from the heart in traditional poems without examining its own existence in a sociopolitical power structure. Their work is often most subversive when both joining and satirizing that weary old, dreary old genre, poetry about poetry. Early Bernstein can be opaque, annoying those who see difficulty as elitist and who want poetry to be cuddly and educational. But everyone should love the later Bernstein, a writer who is accessible, enormously witty, often joyful — and even more evilly subversive.
This selection of Bernstein’s work doesn’t neglect his early experiments. “Lift Off,” apparently transcribed from a typewriter correction tape, begins “HH/ ie,s obVrsxr;atjrn dugh seineopcv i iibalfmgmMw.” A sympathetic reader appreciates the grunting “dugh,” the fortuitous trip to Paris implied by “seine,” the broken “s ob,” the loneliness of the lowercase “i.” This is a conceptual poem — you may be more excited to know it exists than to read through it.
A hilarious, addictive untitled series of sentences sounds cribbed from TV Guide: “Comradery turns to rivalry when 12 medical students learn that only seven of them will be admitted to the hospital. . . . Henrietta Hippo believes she can predict the future by reading the letters in her alphabet soup.” No mere joke, this prose poem gets at the strange dream-normalcy of television, the absurdity of narrative, the tragicomedy of human desire.
“Of Time and the Line” combines prosodic theory, stand-up comedy, and personal and political history by considering uses of the word “line”: George Burns and Henny Youngman punch lines, Bernstein’s father’s “line of ladies’ dresses,” his mother’s hemline, long lines in Russia, soup lines in the United States, Chairman Mao’s political line, “abandoned (most- / ly) for the East-West line of malarkey / so popular in these parts.” In all, there are 40 indefatigably punning, quasi-blank-verse lines — cold war references, hammy delivery, satire of sentimental family history. The sillier Bernstein gets, the more it’s a sign of the poem’s seriousness:
Nowadays, you can often spot a work
of poetry by whether it’s in lines
or no; if it’s in prose, there’s a good chance
it’s a poem.
“Thank You for Saying Thank You” lampoons critics of difficult poetry, beginning, “This is a totally / accessible poem,” satirizing the claims built into certain kinds of lyric poetry and describing itself into existence: “It fully expresses / the feelings of the / author: my feelings, / the person speaking / to you now.” Some claims are bald falsehoods:
It
celebrates the
triumph of the
human imagination
amidst pitfalls &
calamities.
The poem is gleefully about nothing but itself, an extremely funny, cruel, ultimately profound comment on poetic falsification, and what poems can and should and cannot do.
When Bernstein arrives at his own style of lyric beauty, his means are slant. “A Test of Poetry” is a gorgeous catechism of questions, but no answers, posed by a translator to the author of a poem we get only in fragments:
What do you mean by rashes of ash? Is industry
systematic work, assiduous activity, or ownership
of factories? Is ripple agitate lightly? Are
we tossed in tune when we write poems? And
what or who emboss with gloss insignias of air?
This riveting poem, more than five pages long, does everything a lyric aims to do — it creates linguistic excitement, mystery and emotion — without resorting to tiresome epiphanies.
The prose poem “Report From Liberty Street” is one of the few poetic responses to 9/11 to avoid false consolation and the taint of catastrophe-exploitation. “I took a walk on Liberty Street today. Only it was not the same place as I had known before,” the poet reports from Lower Manhattan. He narrates what he sees, thinks and hears, repeating at intervals the chilling refrain, “They thought they were going to heaven.” Because Battery Park is closed, “it’s impossible to get to the Museum of Jewish Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.” Meanwhile, “At Pier A on the Battery, there are two giant Apple ‘Think Different’ ads with blown-up pictures of FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt, who preside over the scene with unflinching incomprehension.”
“Unflinching incomprehension” seems the right phrase for the way Americans watched the events of 9/11, and also for our country’s simplistic, war-justifying stance toward complicated geopolitics. The hijackers are “Not cowards. Men of principle” but “No one deserves to die this way. I think that goes without saying and yet I feel compelled to say it.” How to respond to the events is on Bernstein’s mind. He invokes “Ozymandias,” Shelley’s sonnet about the remains of the statue of an ancient ruler, borrowing and corrupting a phrase from Shelley, “These vast and hollow trunks of steel,” to describe the ruins of the World Trade Center.
Toward the poem’s end, Bernstein says, “The question isn’t is art up to this but what else is art for?” I can think of a lot of things art might be for, including — taking a cue from “All the Whiskey in Heaven” — documentation, commemoration, celebration, satire, theory mongering, genuine sentiment. But Bernstein refuses the responsibility of having the last word on this century’s most vicious and problematic tragedy, instead quoting “Ozymandias” again with tremendous resonance to end his own poem: “The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
I’m not sure whether art is up to the task of dealing with 9/11 and its aftermath. I do know that this calculating, improvisatory, essential poet won’t tell you the truth wrapped up in a neat little package. He might show it to you when you’re least expecting it.
Daisy Fried’s most recent book of poems is “My Brother Is Getting Arrested Again.”
Here's Charles Bernstein’s Web Site
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/11/books/review/Fried-t.html?nl=books&emc=booksupdateema3
The Serbo-Croat poet Jovan Jovanovic Zmaj (1833-1904) wrote, amongst others, several poems simply entitled Rose. Here's
Rose XXI
Could the sun be shining
in the black of night?
Answer shall be given
by your two black eyes.
More poems by Zmaj and a link to a short biography of the man can be found here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Jovan_Jovanovic_Zmaj
Rose XXI
Could the sun be shining
in the black of night?
Answer shall be given
by your two black eyes.
More poems by Zmaj and a link to a short biography of the man can be found here: http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Author:Jovan_Jovanovic_Zmaj
A bit of a long pause there, and I return to a poem already referred to a couple posts back, Leopardi´s
L'infinito
Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle
E questa siepe che da tanta parte
De'll ultimo orrizonte il guarde esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando interminati
Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete,
Io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando; e mi sovvien l'eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e'l suon di lei. Così tra questa
Immensità s'annega il pensier mio:
E'l naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.
Literal:
Poetic:
Ever dear to me was this small hill,
The hedgerow round it that obstructs the view
Of boundless distances where the earth and sky
Merge as one. My sitting there, my gazing out
On spaces limitless, unending silence, on
The depths of quietness my thoughts can sense
Undo the heart almost. I hear the wind
Ruffle the hedgerow and I must go on
Balancing an infinite silence with this voice.
So come to mind the eternal and the dead
Seasons, the present and the living, the sound
Of them: immensities in which my thoughts drown,
Though sweet to me the foundering in such sea.
There are other possibilities for translation ofcourse, since this particular - and exemplary - poem of Leopardi´s has been translated many times. Now here´s what Rilke comes up with:
Immer lieb war mir dieser einsame
Hügel und das Gehölz, das fast ringsum
ausschließt vom fernen Aufruhn der Himmel
den Blick. Sitzend und schauend bild ich unendliche
Raeume jenseits mir ein und mehr als
menschliches Schweigen und Ruhe vom Grunde der Ruh.
Und über ein Kleines geht mein Herz ganz ohne
Furcht damit um. Und wenn in dem Buschwerk
aufrauscht der Wind, so überkommt es mich, dass ich
dieses Lautsein vergleiche mit jener endlosen Stillheit.
Und mir fällt das Ewige ein
und daneben die alten Jahreszeiten und diese
daseiende Zeit, die lebendige, tönende. Also
sinkt der Gedanke mir weg ins Übermass. Unter-
gehen in diesem Meer ist inniger Schiffbruch.
Even without translating Rilke (who was a prolific translator of poetry) back into English it must be clear that Leopardi´s original is hard to render beautifully in another language.
I´ll be having another look at Rilke´s translations later.
L'infinito
Sempre caro mi fu quest'ermo colle
E questa siepe che da tanta parte
De'll ultimo orrizonte il guarde esclude.
Ma sedendo e mirando interminati
Spazi di là da quella, e sovrumani
Silenzi, e profondissima quiete,
Io nel pensier mi fingo, ove per poco
Il cor non si spaura. E come il vento
Odo stormir tra queste piante, io quello
Infinito silenzio a questa voce
Vo comparando; e mi sovvien l'eterno,
E le morte stagioni, e la presente
E viva, e'l suon di lei. Così tra questa
Immensità s'annega il pensier mio:
E'l naufragar m'è dolce in questo mare.
Literal:
Always dear to me was this lonely hill,
And this hedge, which from so much part
Of the ultimate horizon the view excludes.
But sitting and gazing, boundless
Spaces beyond that, and more than human
Silences and profoundest quiet
I in thoughts pretend to myself, where almost
The heart is overwhelmed. And as the wind
I hear rustle through these plants, I such
Infinite silence to this voice
Go on comparing: and come to mind the eternal
And the dead seasons, and the present
And the living, and the sound of it. So through this
Immensity is drowned my thoughts:
And being shipwrecked is sweet to me in this sea.
And this hedge, which from so much part
Of the ultimate horizon the view excludes.
But sitting and gazing, boundless
Spaces beyond that, and more than human
Silences and profoundest quiet
I in thoughts pretend to myself, where almost
The heart is overwhelmed. And as the wind
I hear rustle through these plants, I such
Infinite silence to this voice
Go on comparing: and come to mind the eternal
And the dead seasons, and the present
And the living, and the sound of it. So through this
Immensity is drowned my thoughts:
And being shipwrecked is sweet to me in this sea.
Poetic:
Ever dear to me was this small hill,
The hedgerow round it that obstructs the view
Of boundless distances where the earth and sky
Merge as one. My sitting there, my gazing out
On spaces limitless, unending silence, on
The depths of quietness my thoughts can sense
Undo the heart almost. I hear the wind
Ruffle the hedgerow and I must go on
Balancing an infinite silence with this voice.
So come to mind the eternal and the dead
Seasons, the present and the living, the sound
Of them: immensities in which my thoughts drown,
Though sweet to me the foundering in such sea.
There are other possibilities for translation ofcourse, since this particular - and exemplary - poem of Leopardi´s has been translated many times. Now here´s what Rilke comes up with:
Immer lieb war mir dieser einsame
Hügel und das Gehölz, das fast ringsum
ausschließt vom fernen Aufruhn der Himmel
den Blick. Sitzend und schauend bild ich unendliche
Raeume jenseits mir ein und mehr als
menschliches Schweigen und Ruhe vom Grunde der Ruh.
Und über ein Kleines geht mein Herz ganz ohne
Furcht damit um. Und wenn in dem Buschwerk
aufrauscht der Wind, so überkommt es mich, dass ich
dieses Lautsein vergleiche mit jener endlosen Stillheit.
Und mir fällt das Ewige ein
und daneben die alten Jahreszeiten und diese
daseiende Zeit, die lebendige, tönende. Also
sinkt der Gedanke mir weg ins Übermass. Unter-
gehen in diesem Meer ist inniger Schiffbruch.
Even without translating Rilke (who was a prolific translator of poetry) back into English it must be clear that Leopardi´s original is hard to render beautifully in another language.
I´ll be having another look at Rilke´s translations later.
Do you know which poem by Leopardi is the one that begins with something like "Viene il vento, reganto il suon del ora" (im sure i mispelled that horribly) (the wind comes, bringing the striking of the hour (from the tower of the castle)"?
It was one of the first poems i read without having to learn it for school
It was one of the first poems i read without having to learn it for school
