That's interesting, Trevor, I think there is a great difference
between the poetry of what can be called American and European
English. Though the terms could probably themselves be subjected
to endless refinement, I think they serve as general markers. I
remember a conversation with a director of one of the best poetry
centers here in the U.S., a center that receives almost all poetry
collections and translations into English from all over the world,
and the conversation turned to poetry from the U.K. and the director
explained that she felt that it seemed old-fashioned, vague,
not very interesting. And then there's your remark to the effect
that much poetry in the U.S. is bland and garrulous. At the AWP
conference, I made a remark to the effect that there seems to be
a kind of poetry being universally written except in the U.S., that
perhaps we were an island in that sense, surrounded by a very
different current. So, yes, I do think there is a great difference,
so much so that I don't know when in conversation someone here last mentioned
a writer from the UK or Australia that they were reading with
enthusiasm. Heaney, perhaps, a decade ago, Larkin, also a decade
ago, but no one lately. I don't know if it's an absence of reading
or a lack of interest that carries beyond the reading. I have to
say that I wonder at what seems to be the dominant mode of
writing poetry in both realms, though they are very different. On
the other hand, as far as the comments about your translation,
both Mark and I translate from the Spanish and live or spend
good portions of time in the Southwest, which is another sort
of difference and not really connected to the difference between
American and European English, so much as it is connected to the
West, Mexico, and Spanish culture and language which goes back
to the 16th century, so the sense of the word "sierra" which
would never seem like the mere word of a dead language, no matter
what Beckett might say!
Best,
R
Rebecca Seiferle
www.thedrunkenboat.com
-------Original Message-------
From: Trevor Joyce <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: 04/20/03 12:35 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: another working
>
> Not dismayed, Rebecca - slowed down and made to rethink a little, though,but that's not necessarily a bad thing. And I am a bit startled, not so
much
by the differences revealed between (what I'll call, very crudely)
American
and European English, but by how much I've been taking for granted in that
regard. And, yes, I'm never slow to infer a positive, but it's good to
have
your confirmation of it.
Best,
T
----------
>From: Rebecca Seiferle <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: another working
>Date: Sun, Apr 20, 2003, 7:45 pm
>
> Thanks for the OED excerpt, Trevor. I hope you're not dismayed by the
> amount of attention given to a single word, that is sort of the
> translator's mode, I think. And perhaps I should say too that I don't
> usually think or reply at such length unless the work is of compelling
> interest and merit.
>
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