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Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

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Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#21
post #14

I like George Bacovia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bacovia ) Here is his probably most known one: Plumb Dormeau adanc sicriele de plumb, Si flori de plumb si funerar vesmant - Stam singur in cavou ... si era vant ... Si scartaiau coroanele de plumb. Dormea intors amorul meu de plumb Pe flori de plumb, si-am inceput sa-l strig - Stam singur langa mort ... si era frig ... Si-i atarnau aripile de plumb. (Transl…

Regarding poetry translation (and a lot more), there is this book:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Ton_beau_de_Marot
By Douglas Hofstadter, that I quite like and recommend!

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#23

  here’s a toast to Alan Turing
  born in harsher, darker times
  who thought outside the container
  and loved outside the lines
  and so the code-breaker was broken
  and we’re sorry
  yes now the s-word has been spoken
  the official conscience woken
  – very carefully scripted but at least it’s not encrypted –
  and the story does suggest
  a part 2 to the Turing Test:
  1. can machines behave like humans?
  2. can we?”

  ― Matt Harvey

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#24
For me it's Sir John Betjeman. Very English of course. But...

    A man on his own in a car
    Is revenging himself on his wife;
    He open the throttle and bubbles with dottle
    and puffs at his pitiful life

    She's losing her looks very fast,
    she loses her temper all day;
    that lorry won't let me get past,
    this Mini is blocking my way.

    "Why can't you step on it and shift her!
    I can't go on crawling like this!
    At breakfast she said that she wished I was dead-
    Thank heavens we don't have to kiss.

    "I'd like a nice blonde on my knee
    And one who won't argue or nag.
    Who dares to come hooting at me?
    I only give way to a Jag.

    "You're barmy or plastered, I'll pass you, you bastard-
    I will overtake you. I will!"
    As he clenches his pipe, his moment is ripe
    And the corner's accepting its kill.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#25
Mario Benedetti:

   Don’t Play it Safe

   Don’t stand idle
   at the side of the road
   don’t hold off on happiness
   don’t love with half a heart
   don’t play it safe now
   or ever
   don’t play it safe
   don’t fill up with calm
   don’t take cover from the world
   in a quiet corner
   don’t let your eyelids come down
   like a weighty sentence
   don’t forget you have lips
   don’t sleep but to rest
   don’t ignore the blood in your veins
   don’t think you have no time

   but if
   in any case
   you can’t help it
   and hold off on happiness
   and love with half a heart
   and play it safe now
   and fill up with calm
   and take cover from the world
   in a quiet corner
   and let your eyelids come down
   like a weighty sentence
   and dry up without lips
   and sleep not to rest
   and ignore the blood in your veins
   and think you have no time
   and stand idle
   at the side of the road
   and play it safe
   in that case
   don’t hold on to me.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#28
Thomas Grey ("Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard," with its lyric celebration of ordinary life, is arguably the greatest English poem).

TS Elliot, on his good days (Prufrock counts as a good day, as do the Landscape poems. He oversteps in "The Waste Land".)

Tennyson, when in the mood for melancholy.

Robert Herrick, when in the mood for insouciance, contemplation and the poet's struggle.

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