Poetry Not By You (Unless you're published + good)

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Posters Delight: Mar 8, 2018; CLOWN CRUMB

Last poetry megathread is archived, so I thought I'd open up a new one. The last one was never exactly thriving, but there were some pretty hot opinions going around. I guess I'll just leave you with a couple of (in my opinion) underappreciated late 19th century poets, namely Ernest Dowson and John Davidson, both of whom led tragic lives.

Now Dowson is hardly unknown among aficionados of Aesthetic/Decadent poetry, so some of you may know him, but he's always been more of a poet's poet. Here are some representative works of his. The first two have somehow each leant a phrase that's become embedded in the English language (namely "days of wine and roses" and "gone with the wind," respectively), despite Dowson's general obscurity.

https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/vitae-summa-brevis-spem-nos-vetat-incohare-longam
http://www.bartleby.com/336/687.html (this Latin title means "I am not what I was under the reign of the good Cynara)

https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/amor-umbratilis/ (title means something like "Secluded Love," "Esoteric Love," but literally "Shadowy Love")
http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/dowson/7.html
http://poetry.elcore.net/CatholicPoets/Dowson/Dowson45.html

Dowson's Collected Poems, edited by R.K.R. Thornton, is out of print and comes at a somewhat hefty price for a slim volume, but there are few purchases I'd recommend more if you're into this sort of thing.

Then here is Davidson's best poem, imo (I'd almost call it great):
http://www.bartleby.com/103/21.html

Oh and as a bonus here is an absolutely beautiful edition of Oscar Wilde's long poem "Sphinx" with illustrations (or "decorations") by Charles Ricketts, available for free. W.B. Yeats had the highest praise for this edition in particular.

https://archive.cnx.org/contents/4ee68efc-cc76-4d95-a107-4f268de24664@2/the-sphinx-by-oscar-wilde-with-decorations-by-charles-ricketts-1894

# ? Mar 15, 2018 15:48

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# ? Jan 18, 2026 11:23

Ccs: Feb 25, 2011

The poem I know best is TS Eliot's Prufrock, since a professor in college was very into New Criticism and liked to say how all the modern readings of Prufrock were wrong.

I have his analysis saved for posterity: I agree with his interpretation, but I also think he reads like a parody of old professors.

quote:

I will give some examples of the howlers below, but I cannot resist starting with the skilled Harvard-educated commentator's analysis of the ending of the poem, and in particular Prufrock's famous question to himself: "Do I dare to eat a peach?"

At this point in the poem, you may recall, Prufrock has faced the fact that he is never going to declare his passion to his lady-love. He imagines himself as an old man, walking along the beach, frail and dried up and never having really experienced life before descending into the grave.

Part of the way he imagines himself as being old has to do with the loosening of his teeth. In Prufrock's time, before there was modern dentistry, most people lost some or most of their teeth as they got older. Like stiffness of the limbs or shortening of sight, it was thought to be one of the inevitable consequences of aging.

Even older people who didn't lose their teeth almost invariably had some loosening of their teeth in the sockets�like when you were a kid losing your first set of teeth and felt them going wobbly before you actually lost them.

That's what Prufrock is imagining. The reason he imagines a peach as something he might not "dare" to eat when old is that peaches contain pits�if your teeth are loose, and if you bite into a peach thoughtlessly or unwarily, biting down on the pit of the peach can cost you a tooth.

Here we have, in a word, the meaning of Prufrock's "Do I dare to eat a peach?"

But that is not what the skilled Harvard-educated commentator makes of the line.

Far from it.

What the skilled Harvard-educated commentator thinks the peach is about is "female genitalia."

I am not making this up. Here's what he says: "The peach, through shape and texture, has long been a symbol for female genitalia." He then helpfully adds that "Prufrock's anxiety about eating a peach has much to do with his feelings of sexual inadequacy."

Meanwhile, far from Harvard, at humble Georgetown College in Kentucky, close reading lives on. Another of my students alerted me to a splendid page on Donne's A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning, another poem we read in English 219, that was put up by Professor Rosemary Allen for her students.

Professor Allen got her Ph.D from Vanderbilt, which is where great literary critics like Cleanth Brooks and Randall Jarrell went to school, so it is perhaps not surprising that she knows how to read Donne. Perhaps Harvard could work out an exchange program where it sent its English majors down to Vanderbilt for a semester, to learn how to read poems, and then they could come back up to Harvard to learn about peaches and female genitalia.

quote:

Then here is Davidson's best poem, imo (I'd almost call it great):
http://www.bartleby.com/103/21.html

Pretty good. Poems that rhyme sure are easier to read than the modern stuff. Makes Hell sound a bit weak though.

Ccs fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Mar 17, 2018

# ? Mar 17, 2018 01:24

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I've spent the last 6 months debating whether to learn Catalan so I can read Arnaut Daniel that's my poetry story atm

# ? Mar 17, 2018 04:00

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

She waited, shuddering in her room,
Till sleep had fallen on all the house. 30
She never flinched; she faced her doom:
They two must sin to keep their vows.

This house/vows rhyme is the worst. Poetry is so great but I wish it wasn't so easy to ruin a perfectly fine poem by doing one stupid thing.

edit: there's a few bad things and now I hate this poem

CestMoi fucked around with this message at 04:07 on Mar 17, 2018

# ? Mar 17, 2018 04:05

Bandiet: Dec 30, 2015

CestMoi posted:

I've spent the last 6 months debating whether to learn Catalan so I can read Arnaut Daniel that's my poetry story atm

You mean Occitan I hope.

There's a collection of troubadour poetry called Lark In The Morning which has the facing provencal text, and all the Arnaut Daniel poems in it are translated by Ezra Pound; in fact, not sure if he's the only one to have done so (Daniel into English). His translations are astoundingly rigorous in their replication of the meter and rhyme. With that for foundation, and if you know French, it's fairly easy to appreciate the original.

# ? Mar 17, 2018 04:53

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I've heard they're similar enough that learning one makes you basically able to read the other and if I actually learned Catalan I could talk to people in Barcelona which would be cool whereas if I specifically learned Occitan I could talk to like eight people in Toulouse. It's also something I probably won't actually do so there's that to factor in.

That book looks cool tho, I read a couple of Pound's translations a few days ago and found them super interesting with an incredible sound to them, then I tried the originals and yep they sound amazing even if I have no idea what they say

# ? Mar 17, 2018 05:02

Bandiet: Dec 30, 2015

If you've read The Pound Era.. my mind was blown by Hugh Kenner's analysis of how Pound translated this song (anonymous):

Quan lo rossinhols escria
Ab sa par la nues e�l dia,
Yeu suy ab ma bell� amia
Jos las flor
Tro la gaita de la tor
Escria: drutz, al levar!
Qu�ieu vey l�alba e�l jorn clar.

When the nightingale to his mate
Sings day-long and night late
My love and I keep state
In bower,
In flower,
�Till the watchman on the tower
Cry:
�Up! Thou rascal, Rise,
I see the white
Light
And the night
Flies.�

# ? Mar 17, 2018 05:20

Posters Delight: Mar 8, 2018; CLOWN CRUMB

CestMoi posted:

She waited, shuddering in her room,
Till sleep had fallen on all the house. 30
She never flinched; she faced her doom:
They two must sin to keep their vows.

This house/vows rhyme is the worst. Poetry is so great but I wish it wasn't so easy to ruin a perfectly fine poem by doing one stupid thing.

edit: there's a few bad things and now I hate this poem

iunno, to me it's not so hard to read "house" with a z sound at the end. In a way, that's how it looks to the eye. I think it adds to the colloquialism, the veneer of artlessness, in the poem, just as slant- and half-rhymes do in Yeats and Hardy. After all, it takes the form of a vulgar ballad, the sort that might be composed on the subject of the death of some local man, obscure to the rest of the world.

Bandiet posted:

If you've read The Pound Era.. my mind was blown by Hugh Kenner's analysis of how Pound translated this song (anonymous):

Quan lo rossinhols escria
Ab sa par la nues e•l dia,
Yeu suy ab ma bell’ amia
Jos las flor
Tro la gaita de la tor
Escria: drutz, al levar!
Qu’ieu vey l’alba e•l jorn clar.

When the nightingale to his mate
Sings day-long and night late
My love and I keep state
In bower,
In flower,
‘Till the watchman on the tower
Cry:
“Up! Thou rascal, Rise,
I see the white
Light
And the night
Flies.”

Huh, I've never read these translations, even though I have a book that purports to collect his shorter poems (and contains his translations from Cathay)! That is a wonderful poem in itself. I'm curious to know why Kenner says his translations are particularly faithful--after all, on the surface the syllable counts don't match up line by line. I have The Pound Era, but I haven't read it. Need to. Any other highlights of that book that you can think of?

Posters Delight fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Mar 18, 2018

# ? Mar 18, 2018 02:40

Posters Delight: Mar 8, 2018; CLOWN CRUMB

Also, is anyone here into the Classical languages? I remain something of a pleb in regards to the literature, but I have read and adored a good amount of Vergil and Catullus, and while the main poo poo I've read so far in Greek is Plato, I've also enjoyed looking at Sappho, although she is necessarily very slow going. The Aeolic is almost a different language from Attic.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 02:47

Rand Brittain: Mar 24, 2013; "Go on until you're stopped."

I mean, it seems fairly obvious to me that "do I dare to eat a peach" resonates as a reflection on a passionless life, a worry about growing old without accomplishments, and a metaphor for sexual inadequacy. It would be a pretty bad weird poem if I couldn't tie it to a cluster of related concepts!

# ? Mar 18, 2018 14:09

Ccs: Feb 25, 2011

According to New Criticism as my professor described it there is only one correct interpretation for each image or symbol or line in a poem. Close Reading suggests that we can deduce exactly what this is for a correct reading of a poem.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 14:50

Tree Goat: May 24, 2009; argania spinosa

Ccs posted:

According to New Criticism as my professor described it there is only one correct interpretation for each image or symbol or line in a poem. Close Reading suggests that we can deduce exactly what this is for a correct reading of a poem.

was this a professor in Being Wildly Incorrect About Terms And Their Meanings Studies

# ? Mar 18, 2018 15:09

Ccs: Feb 25, 2011

Haha guess so. He's retired now though so I guess he just sits in his house in Princeton reading books instead of teaching students wrong things.

To his credit his classes were the hardest I ever took in college because he wouldn't abide by other interpretations. Either you used the class to figure out his sensibilities so that your essays would reflect the type of interpretation he liked, or you would get marked down for not analyzing the text correctly.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 15:32

Bandiet: Dec 30, 2015

Schubert Bitch posted:

Huh, I've never read these translations, even though I have a book that purports to collect his shorter poems (and contains his translations from Cathay)! That is a wonderful poem in itself. I'm curious to know why Kenner says his translations are particularly faithful--after all, on the surface the syllable counts don't match up line by line. I have The Pound Era, but I haven't read it. Need to. Any other highlights of that book that you can think of?

Personae is not a complete collection, it is all the early poems that an older Pound thought worth keeping. He didn't like that translation and it was only ever published in the Little Review as far as I know.
It's in the "Motz el son" chapter of The Pound Era. As for highlights, there's some on every page of that thing. It's an incredible work, perhaps what Pound's own prose would have been like if he wasn't quite so impatient. Aside from tackling Pound's whole oeuvre, there are great surveys of Gaudier-Brzeska, Wyndham Lewis, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and others throughout. He also brings in some kind of funny connections sometimes, like Buckminster Fuller and D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

# ? Mar 18, 2018 19:39

A human heart: Oct 10, 2012

Ccs posted:

Haha guess so. He's retired now though so I guess he just sits in his house in Princeton reading books instead of teaching students wrong things.

To his credit his classes were the hardest I ever took in college because he wouldn't abide by other interpretations. Either you used the class to figure out his sensibilities so that your essays would reflect the type of interpretation he liked, or you would get marked down for not analyzing the text correctly.

He sounds cool

# ? Mar 18, 2018 21:45

a man of vision: Mar 16, 2018; by FactsAreUseless

touch me with your naked hand

# ? Mar 19, 2018 03:07

a man of vision: Mar 16, 2018; by FactsAreUseless

touch me with your glove

# ? Mar 19, 2018 03:10

a man of vision: Mar 16, 2018; by FactsAreUseless

and dance me to the end of love

# ? Mar 19, 2018 03:10

Posters Delight: Mar 8, 2018; CLOWN CRUMB

Bandiet posted:

Personae is not a complete collection, it is all the early poems that an older Pound thought worth keeping. He didn't like that translation and it was only ever published in the Little Review as far as I know.
It's in the "Motz el son" chapter of The Pound Era. As for highlights, there's some on every page of that thing. It's an incredible work, perhaps what Pound's own prose would have been like if he wasn't quite so impatient. Aside from tackling Pound's whole oeuvre, there are great surveys of Gaudier-Brzeska, Wyndham Lewis, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, and others throughout. He also brings in some kind of funny connections sometimes, like Buckminster Fuller and D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson.

That's neat. I've actually never heard of Gaudier-Brzeska. That's it, I'm starting that book tonight.

a man of vision posted:

touch me with your naked hand

a man of vision posted:

touch me with your glove

a man of vision posted:

and dance me to the end of love

thanks, vision man

# ? Mar 19, 2018 03:54

chernobyl kinsman: Mar 18, 2007; a friend of the friendly atom; Soiled Meat

let's have some good proper british poems that every red-blooded man and boy ought to appreciate

Invictus, William Ernest Henley posted:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find me, unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Puck's Song, Rudyard Kipling posted:

See you the ferny ride that steals
Into the oak-woods far?
O that was whence they hewed the keels
That rolled to Trafalgar.

And mark you where the ivy clings
To Bayham's mouldering walls?
O there we cast the stout railings
That stand around St. Paul's.

See you the dimpled track that runs
All hollow through the wheat?
O that was where they hauled the guns
That smote King Philip's fleet!

Out of the Weald, the secret Weald,
Men sent in ancient years
The horse-shoes red at Flodden Field,
The arrows at Poitiers.

See you our little mill that clacks,
So busy by the brook?
She has ground her corn and paid her tax
Ever since Domesday Book.

See you our stilly woods of oak,
And the dread ditch beside?
O that was where the Saxons broke,
On the day that Harold died!

See you the windy levels spread
About the gates of Rye?
O that was where the Northmen fled,
When Alfred's ships came by!

See you our pastures wide and lone,
Where the red oxen browse?
O there was a City thronged and known,
Ere London boasted a house!

And see you, after rain, the trace
Of mound and ditch and wall?
O that was a Legion's camping-place,
When Caesar sailed from Gaul!

And see you marks that show and fade,
Like shadows on the Downs?
O they are the lines the Flint Men made,
To guard their wondrous towns!

Trackway and Camp and City lost,
Salt Marsh where now is corn;
Old Wars, old Peace, old Arts that cease,
And so was England born!

She is not any common Earth,
Water or Wood or Air,
But Merlin's Isle of Gramarye,
Where you and I will fare.

# ? Apr 13, 2018 19:09

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

When I was a kid I had a book called THE DANGEROUS BOOK FOR BOYS that was just an extremely tory book with tips about going fishing and making a slingshot and inspirational stories from British military history and it had some poems in it and one was Invictus so now I associate it with trying to make your child Victorian.

It also had Ozymandias which is a much stupider poem to have that kind of prejudice about and yet here I am

# ? Apr 13, 2018 20:50

jagstag: Oct 26, 2015

hold on until i find my copy of vanishing lung syndrome amongst the haphazardly scattered books in my room which is a bunch of pems by a czech immunologist

# ? Apr 14, 2018 04:12

chernobyl kinsman: Mar 18, 2007; a friend of the friendly atom; Soiled Meat

love me a good pem

# ? Apr 14, 2018 04:33

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

Sextus Propertius
From Homage to Sextus Propertius
tr. Ezra Pound

pre:

Yet you ask on what account I write so many love-lyrics
And whence this soft book comes into my mouth.
Neither Calliope nor Apollo sung these things into my ear,
      My genius is no more than a girl.

If she with ivory fingers drive a tune through the lyre,
     We look at the process.
How easy the moving fingers; if hair is mussed on her forehead,
If she goes in a gleam of Cos, in a slither of dyed stuff,
There is a volume in the matter; if her eyelids sink into sleep,
There are new jobs for the author;
And if she plays with me with her shirt off,
      We shall construct many Iliads.
And whatever she does or says
     We shall spin long yarns out of nothing.

Thus much the fates have allotted me, and if, Maecenas,
I were able to lead heroes into armour, I would not,
Neither would I warble of Titans, nor of Ossa
                                  spiked onto Olympus,...

# ? Apr 14, 2018 17:19

jagstag: Oct 26, 2015

here's some poems by miroslav holub that i took pics of because im lazy ft. my unkempt bed and chipping nail polish

# ? Apr 14, 2018 19:47

jagstag: Oct 26, 2015

chernobyl kinsman posted:

love me a good pem

love 2 read pems

# ? Apr 14, 2018 19:48

Tree Goat: May 24, 2009; argania spinosa

jagstag posted:

here's some poems by miroslav holub that i took pics of because im lazy ft. my unkempt bed and chipping nail polish

hell yes these rule

# ? Apr 14, 2018 20:40

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

jagstag posted:

here's some poems by miroslav holub that i took pics of because im lazy ft. my unkempt bed and chipping nail polish

Bitterly disappointed these books are not covered in breadcrumbs and scrawled notes like �chekhov=gun???� m8

# ? Apr 15, 2018 19:44

Franchescanado: Feb 23, 2013; If it wasn't for disappointment
I wouldn't have any appointment; Grimey Drawer

My dad read me this poem when I was a kid and I always enjoyed it. I'm interested in thoughts/criticisms about it.

It's opening verse is firmly etched in my memory, probably thanks the the sing-song rhythm, which was (apparently) inspired by Rudyard Kipling.

Any other poems I'd like?

# ? Apr 17, 2018 19:55

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

Japanese dada/futurism (link to the original is at the bottom if u can read Japanese/just want to see the original form)

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/hagiwara-kyojiro-death-sentence/

# ? Apr 20, 2018 00:08

A human heart: Oct 10, 2012

CestMoi posted:

Japanese dada/futurism (link to the original is at the bottom if u can read Japanese/just want to see the original form)

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/hagiwara-kyojiro-death-sentence/

drat I didn't know there were japanese futurists as well, this is cool

# ? Apr 20, 2018 00:37

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

There was a huge Japanese dada scene and they were all insane anarchists but I can't find enough of their poo poo : (

# ? Apr 20, 2018 13:12

jagstag: Oct 26, 2015

anarchists lit ftw

# ? Apr 20, 2018 14:23

A human heart: Oct 10, 2012

CestMoi posted:

There was a huge Japanese dada scene and they were all insane anarchists but I can't find enough of their poo poo : (

I read something that talked about futurists from places like Poland and the Czech republic once too but I got the impression that none of it had been translated.

# ? Apr 20, 2018 19:56

jagstag: Oct 26, 2015

here's some 21st century Russian poetry so you get to see a little bit of new sincerty poets. shame no one cares to translate modern tussian poetry but i guess the interest left as soon as the cold war ended

# ? Apr 20, 2018 20:22

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

are you the one that posted that like 4 years ago? cos I've been reading a couple of those Voddenikov poems on that website ever since someoone on this web site linked them

# ? Apr 20, 2018 23:02

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I say a couple. i've been reading the two that there are

# ? Apr 20, 2018 23:03

jagstag: Oct 26, 2015

yeah it was me. figured no one remembered it and no one was likely to dig back 4 years worth of posts to see it so here it is again for the four posters itt

# ? Apr 20, 2018 23:54

Tree Goat: May 24, 2009; argania spinosa

i've been reading rimbaud, op

# ? Apr 21, 2018 03:24

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# ? Jan 18, 2026 11:23

CestMoi: Sep 16, 2011

I hope you're reading him in the intended language of his poetry, Arabic

# ? Apr 21, 2018 21:50

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