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I think that I shall never speak as if a poet were a geek it's only ignorance I fear of what we could be speaking here  - yet hold no grudge against a beer
Last edited by BranShea; 02/05/2007 8:39 PM.
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Quote:
I think that I shall never speak
as if a poet were a geek
it's only ignorance I fear
of what we could be speaking here
- yet hold no grudge against a beer
And neither do I, BranShe, I hold no grudge against any man's beer but I do think that desecration of high poetry is...uh, desecration.
Take, for example, this simple, yet moving and thought provoking, poem by Robert Frost...
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village, though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it's queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there's some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and clear,
But I have promises to keep,
And only Schlitz can make a beer,
And only Schlitz can make a beer.
_______________________________________________________________
Notice how the repetition of the last line evokes empathy among like minded readers and gives the poem a surprising end.
No! Some poems are sacred and should not be abused by Awad posters for the sake of a simple joke. 
Last edited by themilum; 02/06/2007 12:20 AM.
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old hand
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"...nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands"
e e cummings
"...:The third miracle made red and green
:The fourth miracle made God duck
:A torpedoed cathedral sinks rapidly into the earth..."
from Musrum by Eric Thacker and Anthony Earnshaw.
cheer
the sunshine warrior
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And say, Bel and BranShe, in Poe's day he was highly regarded in France; moreso than in the United States. It was said that the French translations of THE BELLS and THE RAVEN were vastly superior to the English originals by Poe.
How could this be? Poe's genius is predicated on the poetic union of meter, sense, and rhyme. Were the French translations acts of genius by the translators as well?
Well? Curious minds want to know.]
Paul Verlaine, one of the Poe admiring ' Počtes Maudites' (cursed poets) titled one of his poems "Never More". Nevermore from the Raven split into two words. But clearly
under the infuence of Poe.
There may be several reasons why E.A.Poe has been mostly ignored in his own country. One : he lived and worked in France and England and died young.
Two: : his political and moral ideas may have been offensive to the still young American nation. The idea of a Monarchy in those days may not yet have been as far fetched as it is today.
Three he was proud and poor. ( A more elaborate answer can be found at Miscellany)
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Pooh-Bah
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(POLONIUS: My lord, I will use them according to their desert.)
HAMLET: God's bodikin, man, much better. Use every man after his desert, and who shall 'scape whipping? Use them after your own honour and dignity: the less they deserve, the more merit is in your bounty.
Hamlet, Act II, scene ii
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Just heard this song on Sirius "country favorites" radio. Must have missed it the first time around. No matter, I will now add it to my list of favorite country songlines. As sung by Garth Brooks... Hello operator, trace this call and send a taxi
I'm somewhere drinking but I'm not drinking alone
I've been beside myself ever since she's been gone.
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Quote:
As sung by Garth Brooks...
not drinking alone.....
I've been beside myself ever since she's been gone.
It took me about a day to see the dubble meaning of this line.
(and I once thought I was smart ....)
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How curious, i never thought of poe not being respected in US. He lived various places here, one was the then town of Fordham, (now a neighborhood in the Bronx)
the cottage he rented when he lived there still stands, it was moved a few hundred yards, and a park created around it (poe park) when i was a teen, the apartment building we lived in had a plaque on it, about poe (the apartment building occupied the original location of Poe's cottage.
(Bob Young who used to post here, lives in baltimore, close to St Elizabeth's hospital, (where there is plaque noting Poe died there, and Richmond Va has a professional sport team (football?) called The Raven's (named in part to commemorate Poe.) He might not have been appreciated in his own time, but his short stories are part of most HS reading lists and his poems are regularly included in anthologoies.
not just the raven, but annabelle lee, and for helen, (that i can think of off the top of my head!)
simon and garfunkle set annebelle lee to music (and included it on one of their early ablums, too)
Last edited by of troy; 02/08/2007 10:07 PM.
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Dear Helen, that is really nice news to wake up to. I knew less about his life in America . And I love to know he did one one for you special and a sportsclub named after him. And that little park. Nice to know you live where he lived! l'll go through my old records to see if I can find that song. And through his American past! Thanks a big lot!!! Thank God the bath has an overflow protection or else the hallway would have been flooded by now.;-)
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Thank God the bath has an overflow protection or else the hallway would have been flooded by now.;-)  I didn't realize, Branny, that you had apparently thought Poe still wasn't appreciated here. (Isn't it so often true, though, that people aren't, at the time? Think of Beethoven and van Gogh.) But Poe had sure made it to fame by the time MY lifetime began. We studied him in school, and even today quotes from his works are used in everyday society.
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If you re-read the second part of the blue text 6 posts back you can clearly see that I'm talking about the past. I had no way of knowing about the present. The information I got from Wikipedia told nothing about that. I'm glad history absolved his darker side and recognized his merits.Thanks. I'm glad to know that now. and tell how, Jackietjie did the white turn to blue?
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I really don't like the French translation of The Raven - Le Corbeau.
As is often the case with translations, the French versions are much longer than the English. There is no rythm to the thing and the sentences are too heavy.
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BelMarduk At last I had the time to put one next ot the other. You are right The rythm and rhyme of the English are completely gone. The impact it made must have come from the contents because even in prose, the French of Baudelaire is beautiful. In his own work he had a section of: "Little poems in prose" On the link from French Google you'll find the Baudelaire translation next to the one done by Stéphane Mallarmé It is interesting. Mallarmé has obviously made an attempt to compress and improve the first one. Yet the contents of the narrative looses in gloom and atmosphere compared to Baudelaire's. Who, alas cannot hold the flowing English rythm even without the rhyme. (of course I feel better, now that I know that even great poets have to bow to the untransmittable .) Nice meeting you. http://pages.globetrotter.net/pcbcr/corbeau.html--
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Thank you BranShe. For years I've searched for Baudelaire's transalation of Poe's The Raven in order to understand how a translation could become so popular in France. Thank you. Since I can't read French I had the computer machine Systran translate Baudelaire's translation back into English. Well, except for the part about giving head, and gently striking somebody with a door, I still can't see why the French translation became so popular. THE RAVEN BY BAUDELAIRE (RE-TRANSLATED) "Once, over lugubrious midnight, while I meditated, weak and tired, on many invaluable and curious volume of forgotten doctrines, while I gave head, almost made sleepy, suddenly it was done one tapotement, like gently striking somebody, knocking on the door of my room. “It is some visitor, - I murmured, - who strike with the door of my room; it is only that and nothing more.” 
Last edited by themilum; 02/10/2007 11:47 PM.
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Oh, that's funny! To see a rhymed poem be translated throught French into English prose.That's really funny.
He became so popular because he fitted just fine into that group of poets called "the cursed poets". They were all poets who were attracted by the the dark side of life. The fin de sičcle , the end of the century 'Spleen' '-- 'Weltschmerz
Poems called The Unreparable, Dance Macabre,The Lithanies of Satan.
As some of those poets mastered English quite well, they could read him and take him in as a kindred soul?;)It was a steady group in spite of differences. Edgar Degas, the impressionist painter of the ballet dancers, made a group portrait of them.They loved Poe's sense of the gloomy ,the macabre.They did hashish,opium etc. Romantisism , Weltschmerz.
Poems about poison and demons.Les Počtes Maudites were en vogue in the avant garde combined with the impressionists and symbolists.
(hope this answer will do).?
Last edited by BranShea; 02/11/2007 12:07 AM.
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They loved Poe's sense of the gloomy ,the macabre.They did hashish,opium etc. Romantisism , Weltschmerz.
Funny, eh, how each generation has their groups - the 60's had their beatniks, the 70's their hippies, the 80 their punks and so on.
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Here's one from the fifties... Mash --> Someone to Love --> then select... Please Send Me Someone To Love Heaven speaking, to all mankind I just want some, peace of mind But if it's not, asking too much Please send me someone to love Just because, I'm in misery I don't beg for, no sympathy But if its not, asking too much Please send me someone to love I lay awake nights and count the world's troubles And my answer is always the same. Unless man puts an end To his terrible sin Hate will put the world, in a flame What a shame. Just because, I'm in misery I don't beg for, no sympathy But if its not, asking too much Please send me someone to love. Someone to love. _________________ - Percy Mayfield - 1950 __________ HAPPY VALENTINE MANKIND
Last edited by themilum; 02/12/2007 2:20 AM.
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stranger
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You live and learn, or you don't live long.
- Robert Heinlein.
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Thanks, nightotter, Heinlein did have some zingers.
I like...
I never learned from a man who agreed with me.
___________________________________________Robert A. Heinlein
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stranger
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Indeed he did Milum. One last one from me in this thread...
Always a more beautiful answer that asks a more beautiful question.
- e.e Cummings.
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Maybe I shouldn't. Oh well, what the hell, it's Valentine Day in the States. A poem by ee cummings... the boys i mean are not refined just kidding. I mean... since feeling is firstsince feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you; wholly to be a fool while Spring is in the world my blood approves, and kisses are a far better fate than wisdom lady i swear by all flowers. Don't cry --the best gesture of my brain is less than your eyelids' flutter which says we are for eachother: then laugh, leaning back in my arms for life's not a paragraph And death i think is no parenthesis
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old hand
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"There are some phrases truly impregnated with the freshness of the sea and the smell of roses carried by the breeze."
(from a letter Marcel Proust is writing to a friend)
Proposition:
Just your favorite phrase,sentence,line of the moment. From a book, proze or poetry.
From a newspaper,magazine,the street,whatever. Past present or future. With the source it came from. No limit of date or contributions. No prizes to be won but to be among other people's favorite phrases.
Maybe this has been done before, but favorite lines change with time. Looks like one worth resurrecting for the reason given in the last line above... My favourite 'of the moment' is "When all is said and done, more is said than done" I think it's by the prolific Anon
Last edited by The Pook; 02/23/2008 2:38 AM.
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> "When all is said and done, more is said than done"  Nice to revisit this thread that obviously ended on a Valentine's day. Mine for now is a phrase of many words: "We are not living in a world where all roads are radii of a circle and where all, if followed long enough, will therefore draw gradually nearer and finally meet at the centre; rather in a world where every road, after a few miles, forks into two, and each of those into two again, and at each fork you must make a decision." C.S. Lewis
Last edited by BranShea; 02/23/2008 12:02 PM.
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