Here will be the study guide on poetry that we discussed in class. Again I would like to thank Mary, Katie, Juan, and Edwin for bringing in poems and songs to share with us! I always enjoy hearing what people like; moreover, it may end up on next semester's syllabus! The picture above is 19th century artist Marie Spartali Stillman's painting of Petrarch and Laura's initial meeting.
Let's begin with a few quotes:
Even though I did not mention it when we began our unit on poetry, this quote from British poet Basil Bunting is appropriate: "Compose aloud. Poetry is sound."
Ezra Pound has called for us to "make it new!"
William Carlos Williams has urged "no ideas but in things."
Robert Frost, on the other hand, compared free verse to playing tennis without a net.
William Wordsworth and Walt Whitman both called for the poet to be "a man among men."
In Rasselas, Samuel Johnson argued that it was not the poet's job "to number the streaks of the tulip." Elsewhere, in his criticism, he asked, "if Pope be not a poet, then what is poetry?"
Indeed...consider the poets we covered in class and the others you mentioned in your blog entries.
In a world literature class, translation is important. Without it, we could not read poems such as Petrarch's, sonnets that have been enormously influential to English literature. I read selections from Petrarch's Canzoniere, his poems to his beloved Laura; these translations from the anthology that I use for my EN 201 class do not rhyme!! Then I read Sir Thomas Wyatt's "Whoso List to Hunt," a sixteenth-century translation of one of Petrarch's sonnets. See here for a link to this sonnet--complete with a little backstory: http://www.luminarium.org/renlit/whosolist.htm As you noted, this translation's language sounds archaic (it predates Shakespeare and the hind whom the poet refers to may be Anne Boleyn), and it's a very tight, compact poem. Then I read two of Thomas Wentworth Higginson's translations ("Soleasi Nel Mio Cor" and "Qual Donna Attende a Gloriosa Fama") from the nineteenth-century. (By the way, Higginson corresponded with Emily Dickinson and attempted to regularize her poetry. He was an editor for the Atlantic Monthly.) Here is a link to Higginson's passionate and deft translations with their Italian titles: http://www.sonnets.org/petrarch.htm Finally, I read A.M. Juster's elegant contemporary translations...that rhyme yet evoke an entirely different mood than Wyatt's or Higginson's translations do. For Juster's translations, see this link: http://www.amjuster.com/poem14.html Feel free to compare these translations. What do they show about each translator's attitude towards poetry, especially love poetry?
We also looked at some translations of the Persian poet and Sufi mystic Rumi's work. He composed aloud as he whirled, this action being a prominent activity of Sufi worship. In addition, his poetry was composed in the aftermath of his teacher Shams al-Tabriz's disappearance and possible murder. From my EN 201 anthology, I read Iranian-American scholar Amin Barani's translation of "Who'll Take Us Home Now, Now That We've Drunk Ourselves Blind?". We also watched some of American poet Coleman Barks' performances of his translations of Rumi's poetry. He was accompanied by the Paul Winter Consort. Unfortunately, Barks' approach was a little off-putting as he spoke about mysticism.
We also listened to the original poems of American poet Jane Hirschfield who, with Mariko Aratani, has translated Ono no Komachi's poems. See this link for examples of these women's translations of her poems: http://www.geocities.com/diwakerr/komachi.html
As you see, these wispy poems make Petrarch's sonnet seem wordy and sweaty and clunky. Hirschfield's own poems call us to play close attention to the world around us. In her interview with Bill Moyers, she discussed the role that this attentiveness plays in her life and her poetry. (The poet, by the way, spent some time as a Buddhist nun; during this time, she did not write poetry.)
Among the poems Mary shared with us were translations of the Russian author Marina Tsvetaeva's poetry.
We also discussed the Nicaraguan poet and founder of Modernismo (a Spanish-American school of poetry) Ruben Dario (1867-1916), focusing on his reverent "Walt Whitman" and his political "To Roosevelt." Here is a link to a slightly different translation of "To Roosevelt": http://www.wsu.edu:8080/~wldciv/world_civ_reader/world_civ_reader_2/dario.html
How does it compare to the version that is in our anthology and that I read aloud?
This past Friday (4/25) Edwin and Juan gave a presentation on Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo (1892-1938), reading his poem "Los Heraldos Negros" in Spanish and English! Edwin and Juan also mentioned a recent translation of The Complete Poems of Cesar Vallejo that won an award from the American Academy of Poets. They noted the translator (Clayton Eshelman)'s observation on the challenge of translating Vallejo's poems because of his word play and his invention of new words.
Here is a link to Clayton Eshelman's recent essay on translating Vallejo's poems:
http://www.fascicle.com/issue01/Poets/onvallejo.htm
Ten other poems written by Vallejo and translated by Eshelman were also included in this issue.
http://www.fascicle.com/issue01/Poets/vallejo1.htm
Each of these poems are late poems whereas "Los Heraldos Negros" is fairly early.
Although we did not discuss Ghalib's ghazals, feel free to mention them if you choose to write about the essay prompt on poetry or on translation.
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