Poetry Megathread: so much depends upon a little forums thread glazed with

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Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Stravinsky posted:

What are peoples opinions in regards to translations of poetry. I always have been wary of anything that was not originally written in English because poetry hinges on word choice. Especially so if you have a situation where a word does not really have a companion word in the language your translating to.

It depends on the kind of poetry I suppose. How simple or contrived the form is, etc. Didactic poetry loses a lot of its charm, but a lot of ecstatic poetry I think holds up really well, in part because its more about the image and the ecstatic feeling than imparting a message in an aesthetically pleasing way. I tend to agree with you on the issue of word choice, and so the super literary poetry that depends on language from a higher register and dense allusions is naturally going to translate poorly, but some forms of poetry go out of their way to emphasize simple language and concrete imagery. I think Haiku translates well for this reason, as the whole culture of it tends towards simplicity. Ghazals can also be effective in this regard, since the format has the potential to be so succinct and more encapsulated that it naturally leaves less space for confusion.

Yiggy fucked around with this message at 07:23 on Feb 17, 2014

# ¿ Feb 17, 2014 07:21

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 12:32

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

I haven't read Farid Attar yet, but generally Sufi poetry is almost always playing on the same theme of separation and longing for unity with God/the Absolute/insert your own metaphor. Specifically an imminent conception of the divine, rather than a personality bearing, transcendent conception of God standing aside and above us. Conceptually understanding this doesn't necessarily impart a visceral feel and ear for it. That said, if you're interested in digging into that kind of stuff some more it can help to read that sort of poetry in other contexts as it pops up again and again in many different cultures. In truth, while the Sufis are among the best at that kind of poetry, they're really drawing from a much longer tradition pouring out of Indian culture and religion, which leaked heavily into Sufi thought and mysticism. They perfected the genre, arguably, but they didn't create it.

That said, a common way to wander into a deeper feeling and understanding of what they're getting at is to explore the more abstract, higher spiritual meanings through the more mundane metaphor it is generally expressed through: the relationship between two lovers. If you want to stick to Sufi's, Rumi is great for this.

As I said though, sometimes it helps to get to the same place from different cultures. The much more modern Rabindranath Tagore explores these themes heavily in his own poetry and in the poetry of other great bhakti poets such as Kabir, which he has done some translations of. In Indian culture, this theme is characterized in the arts as a type of feeling that they're trying to evoke, which they call the Sringara Rasa.

Tagore as translated by W.B. Yeats posted:

From Gitanjali

XX (20)

On the day when the lotus bloomed, alas, my mind was straying, and I knew it not. My basket was empty and the flower remained unheeded.

Only now and again a sadness fell upon me, and I started up from my dream and felt a sweet trace of a strange fragrance in the south wind.

That vague sweetness made my heart ache with longing and it seemed to me that is was the eager breath of the summer seeking for its completion.

I knew not then that it was no near, that it was mine, and that this perfect sweetness had blossomed in the depth of my own heart.

To come even closer to home culturally speaking, you can find this kind of poetry in the West though it tends to be less common and falls quite a bit short of the standard Sufis set. It works in some Christian contexts but not in others, where there is a stronger resistance to imminent conceptions of the divine. The transcendentalists tried to play on these themes, but some of them were pretty bad at it. Dickinson went to this place a lot in her poetry. Another that I really like though was Jones Very, who had an intense period writing this sort of stuff before his inner light went out, so to speak.

Jones Very posted:

The Silent

There is a sighing in the wood,
A murmur in the beating wave,
The heart has never understood
To tell in words the thoughts they gave.

Yet oft it feels an answering tone,
When wandering on the lonely shore;
And could the lips its voice make known,
'Twould sound as does the ocean's roar.

And oft beneath the wind swept pine,
Some chord is struck the strain to swell;
Nor sounds nor language can define,
'Tis not for words or sounds to tell.

'Tis all unheard, that Silent Voice,
Whose goings forth, unknown to all,
Bids bending reed and bird rejoice,
And fills with music nature's hall.

And in the speechless human heart
It speaks, where'er man's feet have trod;
Beyond the lip's deceitful art,
To tell of Him, the Unseen God.

For my money though its hard to beat Rumi, Sufi poet par excellence. His range extends to exploring this through the seemingly ultra mundane situation of spurned love and separated lovers...

Rumi posted:

Every day, this pain. Either you're numb
or you don't understand love.
I write out my love story.
You see the writing, but you don't read it.

To a higher register exploration of unity with an imminent divine...

Rumi posted:

You come closer, though you never left.
Water flows, and the stream stays full.
You are a bag of musk. We are the fragrance.
Is musk ever separated from its scent?

# ¿ Feb 18, 2014 01:32

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

I really like Billy Collins poetry. Hits me like comfort food.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2014 06:22

Yiggy: Sep 12, 2004; "Imagination is not enough. You have to have knowledge too, and an experience of the oddity of life."

Can anyone recommend a good anthology of surrealist poetry? Or share some poets they like writing that kind of stuff?

# ¿ Oct 18, 2014 08:15

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