Poetry, April 25

[jade_sabre]

How appropriate is my Lucy icon for today's poem?  Quite.  philia_fan actually introduced me to this poem (pause--I'm so happy this project has actually had some people looking for poems!  It warms my heart, it really does), and I adored it, and now I am sharing it with all y'all, because I suspect that just as this poem reminds me of me, when I was little, and days spent going in circles on my bike or swinging on the swingset for hours and hours, all y'all will be able to see yourselves in it, too.  From Deborah Slicer:




Outside of Richmond, Virginia, Sunday
It's the kind of mid-January afternoon --
the sky as calm as an empty bed,
fields indulgent,
black Angus finally sitting down to chew --
that makes a girl ride her bike up and down the same muddy track of road
between the gray barn and the state highway
all afternoon, the black mutt
with the white patch like a slap on his rump
loping after the rear tire, so happy.
Right after Sunday dinner
until she can see the headlights out on the dark highway,
she rides as though she has an understanding with the track she's opened up in the road,
with the two wheels that slide and stutter in the red mud
but don't run off from under her,
with the dog who knows to stay out of the way but to stay.
And even after the winter cold draws tears,
makes her nose run,
even after both sleeves are used up,
she thinks a life couldn't be any better than this.
And hers won't be,
and it will be very good.

Comments

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

I like this one very much.

[checkers65477.livejournal.com]

And, yeah, you have us thinking about poetry. Thank you for that.

[buella-pearl.livejournal.com]

You've had me reading German love poems. My host-fam loaned the book to me. Reading them and thinking how badly they would translate, makes me question all translated poetry...but then again this poet is really into playing with the words themselves.

Also, I know this is supporting a minority view, but I think German is ideal for love poems. Just look at these words: I=ich, you=du, me=mich, accusitive you= dich, there's also mir and dir. So they mesh together nicely. I had another point, but it has slipped my mind.

My favorite poet will probably always be Dorothy Parker...I want to see some Parker up here before the month is over. My mother used to read it to me as I sat on her knee...which can really mess up a kid.

Since you've been recently into Dickens, we have her poem Charles Dickens
Who call him spurious and shoddy/Shall do it o'er my lifeless body./I heartily invite such birds/To come outside and say those words!

Also...Edward Lear delights my inner child.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

Ooh! If you have any suggestions of German poetry, that would be cool. But I see what you mean about the translation thing. We sang a setting of one of Gretchen's soliloquies from Goethe's poem, and while I don't speak any German, I could tell that the poetry was really just masterful--internal rhyme all over the place, an obviously fantastic meter. But it's really really hard to translate that.

Dorothy Parker--your wish is my command. :-)

[buella-pearl.livejournal.com]

Goethe should've stuck to poetry...grr.

Erich Fried is what I've been reading off and on as far as German poetry goes. zum Beispiel (for example z.B.) and especially for you one that doesn't translate as nicely...but can go pretty much word for word (OH AND I DID)
"Ohne dich"
Nicht nichts/ ohne dich/ aber nicht dasselbe // Nicht nichts/ ohne dich/ aber vielleicht weniger// Nicht nichts/ aber weniger/ und weniger// Vielleicht nicht nichts/ ohne dich/ aber nicht mehr viel

("Without you"
Not nothing/ without you/ but not the same// Not nothing/ without you/ but maybe less// Not nothing/ but less/ and less// Maybe not nothing/ without you/ but not much more)

The sentiment is still nice...but the beauty is gone. It's like bad angsty teenage poetry then.

[jade-sabre-301.livejournal.com]

what else did he do?

NICHT NICHTS! that was in one of our choir songs and Alex was like "the Germans just LOVE this phrase."

and yeah. that's a serious case of lost in translation there. But the original is very pretty. :-)

[buella-pearl.livejournal.com]

I think Fried is an Austrian, just for the record.

And yeah...nicht nichts, if it was so cool in English, we'd use it too.