See, the ocean gleams
Soooo movies this past weekend didn't happen. Writing club didn't happen either. I was sick and I stayed in bed and nothing happened. And I'm STILL sick but at least I feel a little better.
Colds going around at work, ugh. But what you gonna' do. And it was cold this morning too; -38C, but luckily it warmed up in the afternoon. Can't say I'm fond of all this, even so.
Read through a nice chunk of Witches Abroad, though, so that's all right. ...Granny Weatherwax reminds me a lot of my mum in this novel. It, uh. It sure is something. (Needless to say, there is a reason that I do my best to avoid travelling with my mum....)
Also was poking through some poems by Olav H. Hauge, and I was reminded (again, I don't know if I mentioned it before) that I have a very strong preference for translations when it comes to his work...
I can't speak to accuracy of translation, because I can't read Hauge's poems in the original (I've tried, but the dialect of Norwegian that he writes in is too difficult for me) but as poetry the volume that I have translated by Bly & Hedin is so much better, I feel, than the volume translated by Robin Fulton. Which is a pity, because Fulton's volume, Leaf-Huts and Snow-Houses, has a lot more poems in it than Bly & Hedin's The Dream We Carry, which makes up for the smaller number by being a parallel-text. I guess I just have strong feelings about this because I love Hauge's work so much, and in Fulton's translation, a lot of it feels very... flat.
AND!! This reminds me that in May I have more Hauge poetry to look forward to... I just remembered that I pre-ordered Luminous Spaces, which is a new volume that has a ton of Hauge's poetry, some of which hasn't appeared in English, and - and!! - excerpts from his journals and so on. It's translated by Grinde - I'm not familiar with his translation work, so I'm curious to see how I'll take to it; hopefully there will be at least one or two poems that appear in my other Hauge books as well, so I can take a look and compare them (and then contrast to the original, which I can't read - well, I can read it a little, some of them, partially). ...I'm really excited about this book, now that I've remembered it. But ARGH, it won't be released until May! Frustration and woe, etc. Well, I'll find plenty of other stuff to read before then, I'm sure.
...Come to think of it, I have at least one volume of Rolf Jacobsen, and also a couple anthologies of such-and-such, they're a miscellany of things, I don't really know what's in them. And come to think of it, I was rummaging around in the basement the other day, and I think I saw my book of John Donne's works, from back when I was in university. Maybe I should take a look at him again - because even though his stuff is definitely not the kind that I aspire to write, his work is very... Well, I remember that when I began that class on Donne, I hated his poetry, I couldn't stand it, but at the end I developed an appreciation for it, especially on a technical level. Maybe by taking a second look, I might learn or re-learn a few things. When I'm writing poetry, I go about it in such a haphazard way, just slapping words down until they sound right, but maybe taking a good look at something structured so skillfully would help me think about it a little bit more, a little bit harder. Especially if that book is as marked up with notes as I remember, haa.
Anyway. Yes. I should read more poetry. From the books I own, at least, because I do have a few. I would like to poke around the library for more, too, but... our library has hardly any to speak of. Very, very small section for that. I guess people in this town don't read it much. Which isn't a surprise, but there it is.
This entry was originally posted at http://yuuago.dreamwidth.org/3469058.html. You can comment here or at the original entry.
Colds going around at work, ugh. But what you gonna' do. And it was cold this morning too; -38C, but luckily it warmed up in the afternoon. Can't say I'm fond of all this, even so.
Read through a nice chunk of Witches Abroad, though, so that's all right. ...Granny Weatherwax reminds me a lot of my mum in this novel. It, uh. It sure is something. (Needless to say, there is a reason that I do my best to avoid travelling with my mum....)
Also was poking through some poems by Olav H. Hauge, and I was reminded (again, I don't know if I mentioned it before) that I have a very strong preference for translations when it comes to his work...
I can't speak to accuracy of translation, because I can't read Hauge's poems in the original (I've tried, but the dialect of Norwegian that he writes in is too difficult for me) but as poetry the volume that I have translated by Bly & Hedin is so much better, I feel, than the volume translated by Robin Fulton. Which is a pity, because Fulton's volume, Leaf-Huts and Snow-Houses, has a lot more poems in it than Bly & Hedin's The Dream We Carry, which makes up for the smaller number by being a parallel-text. I guess I just have strong feelings about this because I love Hauge's work so much, and in Fulton's translation, a lot of it feels very... flat.
AND!! This reminds me that in May I have more Hauge poetry to look forward to... I just remembered that I pre-ordered Luminous Spaces, which is a new volume that has a ton of Hauge's poetry, some of which hasn't appeared in English, and - and!! - excerpts from his journals and so on. It's translated by Grinde - I'm not familiar with his translation work, so I'm curious to see how I'll take to it; hopefully there will be at least one or two poems that appear in my other Hauge books as well, so I can take a look and compare them (and then contrast to the original, which I can't read - well, I can read it a little, some of them, partially). ...I'm really excited about this book, now that I've remembered it. But ARGH, it won't be released until May! Frustration and woe, etc. Well, I'll find plenty of other stuff to read before then, I'm sure.
...Come to think of it, I have at least one volume of Rolf Jacobsen, and also a couple anthologies of such-and-such, they're a miscellany of things, I don't really know what's in them. And come to think of it, I was rummaging around in the basement the other day, and I think I saw my book of John Donne's works, from back when I was in university. Maybe I should take a look at him again - because even though his stuff is definitely not the kind that I aspire to write, his work is very... Well, I remember that when I began that class on Donne, I hated his poetry, I couldn't stand it, but at the end I developed an appreciation for it, especially on a technical level. Maybe by taking a second look, I might learn or re-learn a few things. When I'm writing poetry, I go about it in such a haphazard way, just slapping words down until they sound right, but maybe taking a good look at something structured so skillfully would help me think about it a little bit more, a little bit harder. Especially if that book is as marked up with notes as I remember, haa.
Anyway. Yes. I should read more poetry. From the books I own, at least, because I do have a few. I would like to poke around the library for more, too, but... our library has hardly any to speak of. Very, very small section for that. I guess people in this town don't read it much. Which isn't a surprise, but there it is.
This entry was originally posted at http://yuuago.dreamwidth.org/3469058.html. You can comment here or at the original entry.