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5288. NuPlanetOne - 9/2/2004 3:02:17 AM …in not so late fashion compared to mote poetry time lapse phenomena. Yes Ulgine, that Japanese poem is at once somehow American, and not so…at the same time. Poetry translations from so many languages read on the page in such a literal way, that they can pack such a wallop from the sheer simplicity in the rearrangement of grammar and closest literal meanings. I’m sure someone could translate what I just attempted to say……it might be beautiful. Which is my other point. I never felt that poetry translations can ever truly work. I remember having to translate a stanza of Pushkin into English back in college as part of a final exam. I realized that I would have to embellish what I deciphered to even get some literal beauty out of it. Yet, reading translations of prose, or even my own modest attempts, (C-), in translating it myself….The prose was much easier to get a coherent resemblance. I don’t know. I know we have gifted linguists in here, as I can recall Maria G giving wonderful insights into Neruda. (S0 miss her!) Anyway, that is that on that. 5289. NuPlanetOne - 9/2/2004 3:02:44 AM
Dying to Know
If I could figure it all out
If it made any sense
I could write just one poem
At absurdity’s expense
And be done with it.
Oh. I know. Writing anything
At all, is an exception
So many billions of souls
Each second since conception
Must strive to simply be.
But we all, at some quiet moment
Find time to sit and think
With faith we assume there is justice
That somehow there is a link
Something that explains the mystery
And with those in our group
The ones we hold and hug
We take refuge and find solace
And in death we wince and shrug
Then the next day comes.
And life goes on
Except for the part where it ends
And that is the odd thing
As if it all depends
As if it were a conspiracy.
5291. Ulgine Barrows - 9/2/2004 12:50:56 PM Sorry, the formatting. 5292. Ulgine Barrows - 9/2/2004 12:55:12 PM oh well. Now I'm seeing an answer from NuPlanetOne that I didn't see before.
So it's not a total loss. 5293. Ulgine Barrows - 9/2/2004 1:31:31 PM
5294. ElliottRW - 9/9/2004 9:38:00 AM Newt
My newt is not minute. If a newt is minute then it is not my newt.
Not Newt
In Euton a Teuton ate on a futon two tons of newtons. 5295. RickNelson - 9/9/2004 10:00:05 PM 5290. Ulgine Barrows - 9/2/2004 10:49:38 PM
Who's Afraid of Poetry?
Americans are -- but help is on the way
—By Jon Spayde, Utne magazine
September / October 2004 Issue
Certain national traits reveal to all the world that we're Americans. There's our compulsive informality; our odd need to start off all relationships on a first-name basis; our relentless urge for self-improvement; and -- though this one may not seem as obvious as the others -- our profound discomfort with poetry.
This was a pretty insteresting article.
Towards the end,
...."What's hard is to be simple and even stupid enough to enjoy it in and of itself: its sound, its beat, its strangeness, and even your confusion - they're all part of the mix."
5296. RickNelson - 9/9/2004 10:02:03 PM ahhhhhhhh, now that's what I'm talkin' about.
5290 is now in 5295.
Very good reading here. Thank you all for this. 5297. ElliottRW - 9/9/2004 10:38:29 PM I'm afraid of poetry that doesn't rhyme or otherwise provide some easily-recognized verbal razzle-dazzle.
What's wrong with a sonnet?
Of course, one of my favorite poems is one I ought to be afraid of. 5298. Ulgine Barrows - 9/10/2004 11:31:19 AM Why yes, I'm afraid of that one too: it doesn't rhyme, and makes me question what those words meant to the author, and perhaps me. 5299. Ulgine Barrows - 9/10/2004 11:33:03 AM Thanks for fixing that post, RickNelson. I tried. 5300. Ulgine Barrows - 9/10/2004 12:11:37 PM The Red Wheelbarrow....
the first time I read it, I noticed the author's name, William Carlos Williams
and I thought I was in mexico living in abject poverty, things going from bad to worse
the second time I read it, I thought I was a 4 yr old
and ready for adventure 5301. anomie - 9/11/2004 6:07:02 AM I enjoy browsing here and just wanted to express appreciation to you all from someone with no poetic bone in his body.
I am lost to most poetry and usually avoid it. For some reason I got caught up years ago in cummings and enjoyed his preciseness. I like chewing on his obscure stuff. But I don't think he's very poetic. 5302. ElliottRW - 9/13/2004 3:03:06 AM i have never read cummings but i know people who write like him in email
In Slate today, there is an article indirectly about a poet named George Starbuck who, it would seem, wrote the kind of poetry that I most appreciate.
(NOT that I don't appreciate the rhyme-free emotionally evocative stuff like NuPlanetOne's House For Sale, above--it's terrific--I just don't think of it as "poetry." Ok, maybe intellectually I recognize it as poetry and, sure, it really is poetry, but not to my inner eight-year-old.)
As it so happens, I've never read this Starbuck fellow, other than the excerpts in the article above, so I'm open to a second opinion. Otherwise, I'm going to try to pick something up from the library this weekend. 5303. wonkers2 - 9/13/2004 7:46:16 AM Elliott, how about this one?
ON THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION'S RESCINDING LIMITS
ON ARSENIC IN DRINKING WATER
Though arsenic's in what we drink,
It's not as nasty as you think.
Yes, hidden in the stroganoff
It's used to knocking people off.
But in your water it's okay--
That's what the mining interests say.
Apparently in Bush's view
It mixes well with CO2.
Calvin Trillin
April 16, 2001 5304. wonkers2 - 9/13/2004 7:49:21 AM Or this one:
ON BUSH BREAKING HIS CAMPAIGN PLEDGE
TO LIMIT CARBON-DIOXIDE EMISSIONS
Yes, W once took the view
That CO2 is bad for you.
He says he's had a turnabout:
We make this stuff when breathing out,
So dangerous is what it's not.
From lobbyists you learn a lot.
Calvin Trillin
April 8, 2001 5305. RickNelson - 9/13/2004 9:33:58 AM Good article ElliottRW.
It's the first time I've read of him as well. He definitely motivates investigation. 5306. RickNelson - 9/13/2004 9:34:49 AM wonkers2, Those Tillin's are funny. 5307. RickNelson - 9/14/2004 12:07:40 AM
Three poems by Yusef Komunyakaa these will appear on this link only today, then an archive search will show them thereafter.
I was reading "Romance" by Stanley Moss on Slate. It left me with a humdrum feeling. I read three other works by Moss and found them alike. Of course it's not comprehensive of him, but these four poems are what I don't like in some poetry. Again to praise NuPlanetOne, his poems exude the style which Moss falls flat upon. Give me a bone why don't ya, Moss gives a bit of half rotten branch to gnaw.
Now Yusof Komunyakaa in the link above has something that plays along and kept me reading. I don't follow why older writers get off on the historical references, but maybe someday I will. I do get off on the black man compendiousness of his themes. Of course I have to take his word for it, but seems like a good bet to me.
Gotta love Y.K.
5308. RickNelson - 9/14/2004 12:32:33 PM The yet to end stream
pebbly washes flicker
and star glare in my eyes
set upon a glittered sun beam.
Frogs, crickets and flies
are background percussion
and strings. As senses are attune
of the drift of air to my ears and eyes.
The air moves past clean stands of pine,
whose aged bark are slate like variegations.
And each step through brushing grasses,
is perfumed by a wind blown pantomime.
I started this poem today. I'm worried about time that I'll have for writting.
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