I'm not sure I'd go that far, but the point is worth taking in. For
many of us, poets in our first (often only) language are the ones we
will learn most from, see most fully.
Nevertheless, Celan, absolutely (do we count Rilke?). And probably
some of those Russians.
Whom would you name (& what Spanish?); there are also a couple of
Greeks early on?
Doug
On 9-Dec-08, at 6:06 PM, David Bircumshaw wrote:
> I would timidly hazard that the greatest poetry of the twentieth
> century was in Russian and Spanish, plus Paul Celan, I don't think any
> twentieth century British or American poets are in the same league.
Douglas Barbour
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