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Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

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Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#331

Post by plug »

pkfrank wrote: post #116

Seamus Heaney - Digging Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging. I look down Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging. The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft Against the inside knee…

Great to see Heaney mentioned by several people here! Recently voted Ireland's favourite poet of the last 100 years. This poem is a great example of his talent to document the small but evocative, quintessential elements of Irish experience. I'm having some wonderful childhood flashbacks of days on the bog right now :)

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#334

Post by [deleted] »

jgrahamc wrote: post #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 sai…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#336

Post by sososoko »

Dambudzo Marechera - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dambudzo_Marechera

  The lives of small men are like spiders' webs;
  they are studded with minute skeletons of greatness.
  Excerpt from House of Hunger
THE BAR-STOOL EDIBLE WORM

  I’m against everything
  Against war and those against
  War. Against whatever diminishes
  Th’ individual’s blind impulse.

  Shake the peaches down from 
  The summer poem, Rake in ripe
  Luminosity; dust; taste. Lunchtime
  News – pass the Castor Oil, Alice.
THERE’S A DISSIDENT IN THE ELECTION SOUP!

  I have no ear for slogans
  You may as well shut up your arse
  I run when it’s I LOVE YOU time
  Don’t say it I’ll stick around
  I run when it’s A LUTA time
  I run when it’s FORWARD time
  Don’t say it we’ll fuck the whole night
  The moon won’t come down
  At first awkwardly, excruciatingly embarrassing
  But with Venus ascending, a shout and leap of joy

  When the sheets are at last silent
  Don’t ask “What are you thinking?”
  Don’t ask “Was it good?”
  Don’t feel bad because I’m smoking
  They ask and feel bad who are insecure
  Who say after the act “Tell me a story”
  And you may as well know
  Don’t talk of “MARRIAGE” if this reconciliation
  is to last.
SHOCK: FOR BETTINA

  Like meteorites, through my long
  Isolated heart-atmosphere, you
  Burst incandescent over my platinum history.
  My future in earthquake reeled; my present only on 
  Seismograph could point to the cataclysm – no
  Evidence of you attached to my stone and flesh,
  Only nightmarish passions which I can still hear
  When you shake your head. Shake it vigorously.
  Nuclear tests of underground love!

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#338

Post by xcrunner529 »

jfaucett wrote: post #176
throwaway43 wrote: post #7

Neruda is my favourite. I want to do to you , what the spring does to the cherry trees. Here's another one Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. How he is able construct such powerful verse out of simple words and concepts always blows me away. Though it looks easy I've never seen a good imitation of his style. Then there's this poem by Phillip Larkin that I like. They fu…

"I want to do to you , what the spring does to the cherry trees." I've never seen that in english, so I looked it up ( http://albalearning.com/audiolibros/neruda/poema14-sp-en.htm... ) I guess it goes without saying, but english really doesn't do him justice, rhyming trees with kisses is pretty poor compared to cerizos and besos which is perfect rhyme. But I suppose poetry is about the most difficult thing to transla…

I would like to become more "cultured" and just aware of more words, forming sentences, communicating, and have more to call on for expressing my feelings.

What is the best way to get into poetry more? Read a couple a day or something? I would actually really like to read Shakespeare, but most seem to be of the mind that you really need a class or something to really get the translation.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#339

Post by macu »

harperlee wrote: post #15

Jorge Luis Borges Edgar Allan Poe Jorge Manrique. This might be the less known so: http://users.ipfw.edu/jehle/POESIA/COPLASEN.HTM It doesn't sound the same in english, though :( And I can only add another vote for Neruda!

Richard Wilbur has done exquisite translations, like this one...

Everness, Jorge Luis Borges

  One thing does not exist: Oblivion.
  God saves the metal and he saves the dross,
  And his prophetic memory guards from loss
  The moons to come, and those of evenings gone.
  Everything is: the shadows in the glass
  Which, in between the day’s two twilights, you
  Have scattered by the thousands, or shall strew
  Henceforward in the mirrors that you pass.
  And everything is part of that diverse
  Crystalline memory, the universe;
  Whoever through its endless mazes wanders
  Hears door on door click shut behind his stride,
  And only from the sunset’s farther side
  Shall view at last the Archetypes and the Splendors.

Re: Ask HN: Who are your favorite poets?

#340

Post by ttctciyf »

Some really inspiring versification in here, and it would be difficult to surpass the aesthetic and philosophic achievements already mentioned.

However, for sheer technical brilliance, perhaps a word should be said for the ElectroBard from Stanislaw Lem's Cyberiad, whose verbal virtuosity was such that when challenged:

“compose a poem- a poem about a haircut! But lofty, tragic, timeless, full of love, treachery, retribution, quiet heroism in the face of certain doom! Six lines, cleverly rhymed, and every word beginning with the letter S!!"

the response was instant:

    Seduced, shaggy Samson snored.
    She scissored short. Sorely shorn,
    Soon shackled slave, Samson sighed,
    Silently scheming
    Sightlessly seeking
    Some savage, spectacular suicide."
... and if you think that's good, just imagine how great it was before being translated into English! (By Michael Kandel iirc)
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