The Anacreontea by Robin Hamilton are a vigorous modern take on the ancient 
texts.  My own translations of some of them were posted to this list some 
time ago and are available on the translations section of my web site.  
They’re more conventional than Robin’s; my main goal was to try to convey 
the casual polish of the originals.  Incidentally, a picture of Anacreon can 
be found here (you my have to fiddle with the URL if your mail doesn’t show 
it all on one line):

http://www.smb.spk-berlin.de/klassik2002/klassiksite_v2_e/themen/3_bildthemen_und_bildformen/zoom2/index.html

It's presumably an idealized portrait rather than a true likeness, though 
I'm not an expert on Greek sculpture and I don't know what the scholars 
would say about that.

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I meant to mention last week that my other attempt at Sapphics, a 
translation of Catullus's version of Sappho, was also posted here in the 
past and can be found on my web site.

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Robin Hamilton's "Regarding the World" is curate's-eggish:  it would be 
quite an impressive poem if the putty  were gotten rid of.  It gains from 
its vivid echoing of the accents in which poets have traditionally said 
these things, like Pound's:

     Death has his tooth in the lot,
                               Avernus lusts for the lot of them,
     Beauty is not eternal, no man has perennial fortune,
     Slow foot or swift foot, death delays but for a season.

or Bunting's:

     Remember, imbeciles and wits,
     sots and ascetics, fair and foul,
     young girls with little tender tits,
     that DEATH is written over all...

I first encountered the latter when Bunting read it while sitting right next 
to me, but some people here have heard that story before.

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Speaking of Medieval lyrics, I hope everyone here knows of Helen Waddell's 
classic book Medieval Latin Lyrics. Anyone who doesn't should immediately 
get up from their computer and go out to get a copy.

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I would like to suggest, not as a project (unless Randolph decides to make 
it one) but just as an idle entertainment, that list members who wish to 
take up the challenge should post the absolute, totally, completely worst 
poem they are capable of creating.  (Voice from the rear:  "Haven't you 
already been doing that?") The list may by acclamation award to entrants of 
sufficiently awful quality a virtual quill made out of a turkey feather.  My 
contribution follows.  People might want to post their own contributions as 
replies under that same subject heading, to avoid any embarrassing confusion 
over whether what they're sending is supposed to be terrible.

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Quote of the week:


                  No poems can please for long or live that are written by 
water-drinkers.

                                                                             
    -- Horace


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Jon Corelis        [log in to unmask]        
http://www.geocities.com/joncpoetics

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