(Untitled)

[wwidsith]

The next best thing to reading something wonderful is reading something truly awful - so awful it seems to crystallise everything you want to do in terms of what it isn't. I recently came across this little gem of a poem, by Jack Gilbert. I hate it.

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies

Comments

[muckefuck]

I demand that you post or link to an actual decent poem so that I may wash away the memory of the minutes I spent reading this one.

[wwidsith]

OK since you read Spanish, here's my favourite poem of the 20th century

http://www.swans.com/library/art8/xxx081.html

(ignore the English parallel text, it's not very good)

[gnossiennes]

If the English version isn't very good, then I must learn Spanish just to read this poem! I think it is beautiful.

Have you read any Wislawa Szymborska?

[wwidsith]

Yes indeed, I sat struggling with a book of her poems (Widok z ziarnkiem piasku, or View with a Grain of Sand) when I was learning Polish - Wisława Szymborska is awesome! She is someone else that has not been very fortunate in her translators, but then translating poems well is essentially impossible I guess. -No, that's not true. I just find it hard to really enjoy translations of anything because I am more interested in turns of phrase and sentences than I am in plot, character development etc., so I'm always very worried that I'm not seeing what the writer actually wrote.

[gnossiennes]

That was going to be my next question: whether you know any Polish and have an opinion on the translation of her poems, because sometimes when I read her I am jarred by what seems uncharacteristically sloppy language, so I am glad to hear that it isn't her fault. I started reading her on the recommendation of commonpeople--after he mentioned her I happened to stumble across her collected poems for 4 euro in the bargain bin at a bookshop in Dublin. I devoured them in a day.

[wwidsith]

Well my Polish isn't very good really, I can read it OK but can't hold a conversation for long without panicking. But I like reading poetry in the original, you don't have too many words to deal with and it can normally be worked out with a dictionary if you have a bit of time. Also, it forces you to read the thing slo-o-owly, which is always good for poems