And then there are the poems written in English...I'm not sure where the poems from the Nuyorican anthology would fit, and I forget whether Michael Ondatjee wrote his poems in English or another language.
We began our unit on poetry, discussing some Romantic poets and their poems (excerpts from Lord Byron's mock-epic Don Juan, Coleridge's "Rime of the Ancient Mariner," and Keats' beautiful "Eve of St. Agnes"--the image above is Holman Hunt's painting of a scene from that poem). In the section of "Don Juan" that we read, Juan has landed on an island where he and Haidee, the daughter of a pirate king, will fall in love. Juan is no innocent as he is escaping from his (discovered) affair with an older woman. Byron plays with the conventions of the epic, especially as he goes off track, discoursing on "wine and women, mirth and laughter." We also discussed Coleridge and Keats' narrative poems. Although I did not mention it that day, the concept of medievalism is important here.
We moved onto Walt Whitman's poetry from Leaves of Grass, a collection that he revised throughout his adult life (Whitman lived from 1819 to 1892). Two poems that we looked at were "I Hear America Singing," for its inclusiveness (that Ruben Dario later plays on) and "O Captain! My Captain," a more conventional eulogy to Abraham Lincoln. We discussed whether or not these poems could be sung with accompaniment. (We had just watched the tape of Coleman Barks' performance.) "O Captain! My Captain!" also seems like it would be easy to memorize!
For a contrast, later, we looked at poems by Native American writers Paula Gunn Allen and Leslie Marmon Silko. These seemed to be harder to read, and it became harder for us to say what was poetic about them. These poems were Gunn Allen's "Pocahontas, to her English Husband, John Rolfe" and the ironic "Taking a Visitor to See the Ruins" (about the poet's taking a guest to see her mother and her grandmother at their high rise apartment) as well as Marmon Silko's excerpt from The Storyteller in which she retells a Coyote tale told by her white great-grand father. This time Coyote is not a male trickster but a female victim of another figure's trickery, and her pups die of thirst because of this trickery. As I reflect on these poems, I remember Ngugi wa Thiong'o's essay on the importance of writing African literature in African (i.e., native) languages. Should Leslie Marmon Silko or Paula Gunn Allen write their poems in Keresan (the language of the Laguna Pueblo)?
Mary also brought in some of Billy Collins' poems as well as reading one of her own. (Her poem, by the way, is in the Advocate. Congratulations!!)
We also looked at the relationship of poetry and music/popular song, figuring in the concept of orality and the effect of print culture. Songs that we listened to included three from Richard Thompson's 1000 Years of Popular Music (the medieval "Sumer is Icumen In" [also parodied by Ezra Pound at one point], the 18th century ballad "Bonnie St. Johnstone," and a cover of Britney Spears' "Oops..."). Here are links to the lyrics of the first two songs:
http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=428
http://www.richardthompson-music.com/song_o_matic.asp?id=586
We also listened to English-language and Spanish-language songs by Los Lobos. Here is a link to the lyrics of the English-language song, "One Time, One Night" from 1987:
http://www.lyricsmania.com/lyrics/los_lobos_lyrics_5296/by_the_light_of_the_moon_lyrics_16979/one_time_one_night_lyrics_196225.html
These are the Spanish lyrics of their version of "Volver, Volver":
http://www.lyricsdir.com/los-lobos-volver-volver-lyrics.html
We also listened to songs by The Mighty Sparrow, a famous calypso singer from Trinidad. Is he a trickster or an acute social observer?
Here is Billboard.com's catalog entry for Early Flight, the album that I brought in. (We listened to "Sailor Man," "Dear Sparrow," and "Russian Satellite.")
http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/discography/index.jsp?JSESSIONID=DK1KH51JV1XMm1zXTgqTHdYFLnWy1bXQPTmY9b4pm0hdvLTzxy1d!87636624&pid=3875&aid=742126
I will let you look for his videos on YouTube! Good night! 
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.
