This is tough. And many thanks for all the pointers this thread includes. I
confes I do dislike naming preferrences caus' they keep shifting. Thru'
time. Each poet is his own peculiar world. I could come up with a string of
native names, going back to such Eddic poems as the 'Völuspá' and 'Hávamál',
or the poetry of either Hallgrímur Pétursson and his generation (17th
century) or Jónas Hallgrímsson (19th century), to a long list of 20th
century names.
Or a line of foreign poets I read first in Icelandic translation: Rimbaud.
Baudelaire. Verlaine. Appollinaire. Saint John Perse. Eluard. Prévert.
Mayakovsky. Yevtushenko. Quasimodo. Pavese. Ungaretti. Campana. Seferis.
Ritsos. Pound. Eliot. Lorca. Jiménez. Machado. Valléjo. Celan. Brecht.
Trakl. Rilke. Kunert. Herbert. Rózewicz. And all those Chinese and Japanese
classics.
I could then name Danes, Swedes or EVEN Norwegians read in their original
languages, but I won't. Except for Tranströmer. And Björling. Bellman.
Martinson. Södergran. Carpelan. Nordbrandt. Aspenström. Hauge. Vold.
Jacobsen.
To make things simple I'll go back to when I began reading poetry in
English. What impressed me then? Firstly those neat selections of
international poetry from Jonathan Cape, the Nathaniel Tarn editions for
Cape Editions through which I first came across a number of poets that have
stayed with me: Miroslav Holub, William Carlos Williams, Nazim Hikmet (who
I'd already read in Icelandic), Charles Olson; Zukovsky (prose), Reverdy,
Bonnefoy, Bréton, Nicanor Parra, Pablo Neruda. And then, that series Penguin
Modern Poets, coupled with Allen's The New American Poetry. Through and
because of these I read a lot of Ashbery, a lot of Olson, a lot of Ginsberg
[his 'America' could easily top my list like it does Sam's list],
Ferlinghetti, Kenneth Koch and onwards to Creeley, who's stuck by/with me
through thick and thin up to now. Of the Brits I can't get past Tom Raworth,
who's stuck by/with me just like Creeley, Like Beckett. Like WCW. D.M.
Black's 'The Educators' impressed me. Tarn impressed me. Levertov. Harwood.
Oh, very much so. And The Mersey Sound volume, featuring Henri, McGough,
Patten, not a place I go back to. But the Penguin Modern Poets no. 19,
Ashbery, Harwood, Raworth was my favourite of the lot.
Oh, I forgot. What probably came first was The Penguin Book of Socialist
Verse, edited by Alan Bold. I think 'socialist' made me buy it, back then.
It being that time/period. That book still has the most incredible set of
names in it. Not all good poetry, mind you, but it makes a solid stance.
Commendable at least. Flipping through it now, as I speak, I see I've read
it all very thoroughly, diligently, underlining poets' names, titles of
poems, individual lines, as well as lines and passages in Bold's
introduction.
Ah, the sweet bird of youth!
And then there was the Penguin 'British Poetry Since 1945', edited by Edward
Lucie-Smith, which I loved and litertally read to bits [I now need to
shuffle the pages into their original order], and where I discovered
Bunting, David Jones, Gascoyne, Stevie Smith, Francis Berry, Turnbull,
Hollo.
To make a choice, finally, here's a poem I took to heart back then. One
which I still like. It's by Tom Raworth (who else). Here's from memory, more
or less:
YOU WERE WEARING BLUE
the explosions are nearer this evening
the last train leaves for the south
at six tomorrow
the announcements will be in a different language
i chew the end of a match
the tips of my finger and thumb are sticky
i will wait at the station and you
will send a note, i
will read it
it will be raining
our shadows in the elecric light
when i was eight they taught me real
writing
to join up the letters
listen you said i
preferred to look
at the sea. everything stops there at strange angels
only the boats spoil it
making you focus further
This was extremely liberating back then. And I still ... ['thrive' would be
too something, but] breathe and write ...
Best
Árni
--
Árni Ibsen
Stekkjarkinn 19,
220 Hafnarfjördur,
Iceland
tel.: +354-555-3991
e-mail: [log in to unmask]
http://www.centrum.is/~aibsen/
on 10/18/02 9:22 AM, Sam Brenton at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> A current presiding spirit of mine is Ginsberg's 'America'. I found a
> recording of him reading it with Tom Waits tinkling in the
> background. It's Old Man Allen - honeydew voice cracking. But the poem
> breathes like it ceased to on the page. It comes across as pertinent to
> current confusions - a redress for me in my Anglo-fug, amid all the rampant
> anti-Americanism that's become acceptable here lately.
>
> It is a broken American Dream. The outsider, ill-at-ease, gay, a pinko by
> upbringing, a drug-taker, a trivia-sponge, nevertheless loving something,
> never really quite expressible, about the culture. 'This place is not
> free' he says, under the lines, 'And yet... I love its freedoms'. He's
> both like a child in awe of the culture he loves and which spurns him, and
> also chides it like a parent: 'When will you learn, America?'.
>
> This is the end of the poem:
>
> America you don're really want to go to war.
> America it's them bad Russians.
> Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
> The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take
> our cars from out our garages.
> Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our
> auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations.
> That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
> Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
> America this is quite serious.
> America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
> America is this correct?
> I'd better get right down to the job.
> It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts
> factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
> America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.
>
> (you can see the rest here:
> http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/88/america.html )
>
> On the recording, his 'Help', is comic, sly, satirical, tender. A better
> armoury with which to point up the catastrophic stupidity of nation-scale
> anythings than is the finger-jabbingly simplistic bile one hears directed
> towards generic 'America' from much of the left in the UK right now.
>
> If anyone here uses file sharing software a la Napster (RIP), just type in
> 'America Waits Ginsberg' and you'll hit gold dust.
>
> Sam
>
>
> At 00:33 18/10/2002, you wrote:
>> Dave noted of W.S. Graham: 'Now as far as I know he wasn't a Gaelic speaker
>> anyhow, to the best of my
>> knowledge Greenock isn't exactly populated with such, correct me if I'm
>> wrong, as that would be something about him I didn't know, but what I mean
>> is that English was his language anyhow.'
>>
>> And Robin responded, correctly: 'Perhaps this turns on a divergence over
>> "language" -- I don't think David (H) is arguing that Graham spoke Gaelic,
>> but that he made a choice of English rather than Scots.'
>>
>> Robin then went on: 'how do you react to the earlier stuff, up to "The
>> Nightfishing"? Much as I love MML, and thereafter, I can't seem to get into
>> the pre-1950s work at all.'
>>
>> I agree that Graham was a late developer. While he valued his early work
>> highly, I (like many) date his maturity from 'The Nightfishing' (1955). This
>> is widely regarded as his masterpiece; wonderful as it is it is matched by
>> 'Malcolm Mooney's Land' (1970). 'Implements in their Places' (1977) is less
>> sustained but contains some magnificent poems. All of these collections were
>> published by Faber & Faber, where T.S. Eliot was an admirer. Faber have a
>> re-edited (and newly annotated) 'Collected Poems of W.S. Graham' scheduled
>> for release in May 2003. The editor is the poet Matthew Francis, who also
>> has a critical study nearing completion. The Francis edition will replace
>> 'Collected Poems 1942-1977', which was seen through the press personally by
>> Graham in 1979, shortly before he died of cancer.
>>
>> David Howard
>
>
>
> Sam Brenton, Educational Technologist
> Educational and Staff Development
> Queen Mary, University of London
> Mile End Road, London, E1 4NS
> Tel: 020 7882 5309
> Fax: 020 7882 3159
> http://www.admin.qmul.ac.uk/esd/ltech
|
