MetaFilter posts tagged with Literature and poetry

Enheduanna, the first poet we know by name

Kattullus — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:33:39 -0800

Enheduanna was a priestess and poet in the city of Ur in the 23rd century BC and supposedly the daughter of Sargon the Great of Akkad. She is the first author known by name. Here are a number of her poems in English translation, The Exaltation of Inana, Inana and Ebih, A Hymn to Inana, The Temple Hymns and A Balbale to Nanna. Here are two alternate translations of The Exaltation of Inana, one by James D. Pritchard and an English rendering of Dr. Annette Zgoll's German translation. If you want to learn more, go to The En-hedu-Ana Research Pages.

Brindin Press, poetry translations

Kattullus — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:38:18 -0800

Brindin Press has lots of poetry translations into English online, concentrating on French, German, Italian and Spanish, though more than 40 other languages are represented as well. A boatload of translators is represented, from those toiling in obscurity to big literary names (e.g. there are translations of Catullus poems by Ben Jonson, Jonathan Swift, Louis Zukofsky, Aubrey Beardsley and Thomas Hardy). There is also a section of quirky poems. Finally, here's a rendition of Goethe's Der Erlkönig that substitutes the elfish king with a dalek.

Thousands of poems by women writers of the British Isles in the Romantic era

Kattullus — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:28:33 -0800

British Women Romantic Poets Project is a collection of poetry written by women from the British Isles between 1789 and 1832. Over a hundred female poets are represented. Women rarely feature in literary histories of the Romantic period but there is treasure if you search (some poems are, frankly, terrible). A few places to start are Charlotte Turner Smith's Elegiac Sonnets, and Other Poems, Christian Ross Milne's Simple Poems on Simple Subjects and Mary Robinson's sonnet cycle Sappho and Phaon. The oddest works to modern readers may be Elizabeth Hitchener's Enigmas, Historical and Geographical and Marianne Curties' Classical Pastime, which are collections of verse riddles (the answers are at the end of the text).

A conspiracy of theorists

Mr. Palomar — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:51:19 -0800

Several Twitter-based games were launched during the world's first Literary Twestival: Flash Fiction, Collective Nouns, Pass the Plot, and Project Twutenberg (via).

Clerihews

Iridic — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:12:50 -0800

Sir Humphry Davy
Was not fond of gravy.
He lived in the odium
Of having discovered sodium.

This is the first example of the form that came to be known as the cler ihew. It's a biographical quatrain with a rhyme scheme of AABB. The first line uses the subject's name as a rhyme, while some element of their history occupies the rest of the stanza. The form aspires to wit, irreverence, and metrical irregularity:

Oscar Wilde Had his reputation defiled. When he was led from the dock in tears He said, "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at two years." (Stephen Fry)

Edmund Clerihew Bentley, who invented the clerihew as a schoolboy, is best remembered today as the author of Trent's Last Case, cited previously on Metafilter as the 33rd best mystery novel of all time. Several clerihews by W.H. Auden Sarah Palin clerihews Clerihews on philosophers Clerihews on female poets of the Romantic era

wetness ... pours onto my paper out of my pen

divabat — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 09:32:05 -0800

Suheir Hammad, a Palestinian-American poet and activist now based in New York, writes about being a Muslim immigrant and also a woman challenging conventions. Spotted by Russell Simmons for Def Poetry Jam, she has performed pieces about love in the time of war, exoticising beauty, and a touching ode to her father, among many others. Suheir has just produced and released her first feature film Salt of This Sea, up for the Cannes Films Festival and possibly an Oscar, and recently performed in Ramallah for the 2009 Palestinian Festival of Literature.

C. P. Cavafy, demotic poet

Kattullus — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 09:37:10 -0800

The Cavafy Archive has translations of all of C. P. Cavafy's poems (go here for the Greek) except for the 30 unfinished poems, which have just recently been translated into English for the first time by Daniel Mendelsohn. His translations are reviewed in a lengthy essay by Peter Green in the most recent New Republic. Mendelsohn was interviewed on NPR's All Things Considered earlier this week. Late last year Mendelsohn wrote an essay about Cavafy in The New York Review of Books. The Cavafy Archive also has translations of a few prose pieces by Cavafy as well as manuscripts, pictures, translated letters & short texts and a catalog of Cavafy's library.

The influence of Edmund Spenser across two and a half centuries as traced through 25000 different texts

Kattullus — Wed, 27 May 2009 20:54:47 -0800

Spenser and the Tradition: English Poetry 1579-1830 is a mammoth database of English poetry and other writings that traces the influence of the great 16th-Century poet Edmund Spenser on English poetry across 250 years. There are roughly 25000 different texts on the site, over 6000 poems from famous classics to obscure ephemera, and further thousands of biographies and commentaries. Since it would take years to read all the material I am happy to say that there is a guide to navigating the database, an overview of its contents, a statistical summary and an essay on tradition and innovation. The immense database, which started life as a pile of index cards, was compiled largely by Virginia Tech Professor David Hill Radcliffe over the course of 17 years.

Study Guides, Teacher Resources

netbros — Sun, 24 May 2009 04:02:58 -0800

Shmoop is study guides and teacher resources that help us understand how literature and history and poetry are relevant today. Take for example Shakespeare's Sonnet 130. Get a technical analysis of it's literary devices, explanations of the themes, and audio/video readings of the sonnet.

Shakespeare's Sonnets Turn 400

Joe Beese — Wed, 20 May 2009 06:59:16 -0800

400 years ago today, Thomas Thorpe entered into the Stationers' Register a book titled "Shake-Speares Sonnets". However, Clinton Heylin argues that - like Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes - the Sonnets were never intended for a wide audience. "In both cases, they were killing time and at the same time dealing with huge personal issues in a private way, which they never conceived of coming out publicly."

"Chinese poetry, as we know it today, is something invented by Ezra Pound." - T. S. Eliot

Kattullus — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 20:03:27 -0800

[Ezra Pound] worked on and for poetry as others might work on a major scientific discovery or a drawn-out military mission. Thus, as Sieburth reminds us in his introduction to The Pisan Cantos, when, on May 3, 1945, Pound was arrested at his home in the hills above Rapallo, he immediately put a small Chinese dictionary and a copy of the Confucian classics in his pocket. Working as he then was on his Confucian translations, he knew that, wherever the military police were taking him, he would need these books.

From Pound Ascendant by Marjorie Perloff. Ezra Pound's ability as a translator of Chinese poetry has long been disparaged by sinologists, such as George A. Kennedy in Fenollosa, Pound and the Chinese Character. Other academics have sought to defend him. Two examples are Zhaoming Qian's Ezra Pound's encounter with Wang Wei: toward the "ideogrammic method" of the Cantos and Stephen Tapscott's In Praise of Bad Translations: Ezra Pound and the Cultural Work of Translation (pdf). Eric Hayot draws the contours of this long-running debate and explores its significance in Critical Dreams: Orientalism, Modernism, and the Meaning of Pound's China. Pound's Cathay in full and a public domain audiobook version (iTunes link).

in the street of the sky night walks scattering poems

goodnewsfortheinsane — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:58:29 -0800

Should you find yourself wandering around the city of Leiden, the Netherlands sometime, you may notice some curious markings on the city's walls.

These Muurgedichten ("Wall Poems") adorn many of the town's streets (clickable map), and many English-language poets are represented: one John Keats, for instance, inside a bookshop; Dylan Thomas, E. E. Cummings, W.B. Yeats, some guy called William Shakespeare, or this ode to Charlie Parker by American William Waring Cuney. But poets of many other languages and nationalities can be found throughout the city. Just to name a few: Charles Baudelaire (French), Jorge Luis Borges (Spanish - Argentina), Herman Gorter (Dutch). And being native to this here neck of the woods I would be remiss if I were to neglect mentioning some of my favourites: apart from the Cummings one mentioned above, my hero of Dutch poetry J.C. Bloem's appropriately overgrown tribute to Paul Verlaine; and Guillaume Apollinaire's Dadaist/Surrealist "Loin du Pigeonnier" ("Far From the Dovecote"). Lastly, Muurgedichten collects manifestations of public poetry found elsewhere under its "Not in Leiden" heading. I couldn't resist a selection:

Humorous medical one in Brazil (Portuguese).

Martin Carter (Netherlands Antilles, English)

Excerpt from JFK's inaugural address (Boston, English)

Childrens Rights (Zanzibar, English)

Policemans Prayer (Virginia, US, English)

Short, brilliantly framed Byron quote (Utrecht, NL, English)

No man is illegal (Sittard, NL, Dutch)

I am a poet. Should I want the rose to bloom, the rose will bloom. (Vlaardigen, NL, Dutch)

You'll Think, What's That Poet Doing (Monnickendam, NL, Dutch) You'll think, what's that poet doing In our alley On our wall In our town When he's not from 'round here. To be frank: so do I. But still, now you're looking at me. I can talk to you, say That I am happy you're looking at me And then you might for instance say "likewise". We wouldn't have done so otherwise.

Under the Eye of the Clock

a womble is an active kind of sloth — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 08:17:15 -0800

Irish poet and writer Christopher Nolan died on the 20 Feb. Nolan was born with cerebral palsy, and typed using a 'unicorn stick' attached to his head. Nolan has never spoken, yet his poetry has been compared to that of Joyce, Keats, and Yeats. Among firs, a cone high-flown, Winged, popped, Hied, foraying, embalming, Sembling tomb Among coy, conged fir needles, A migratory off-spring Embarks on life’s green film. A link from the Economist about him, and the Irish Times. He had an incredible vocabulary, and amongst other notable achievements provided the inspiration for a U2 song.

Classic Poetry Aloud

Iridic — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 10:39:19 -0800

Classic Poetry Aloud: free recordings of 427 public domain poems.

visual poetry, today

mediareport — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 17:53:25 -0800

Visual Poetry Today collects various forms of visual poetry, today. It includes Peter Ciccariello, who wraps text around computer-modeled landscapes. Here's more from Derek Beaulieu, including his "flattening" of Edward Abbot's Flatland, and links from his site to a pointed, if not savage, back-and-forth about an anthology he co-edited. More from Joel Lipman. See also the classics thread at the vispoets discussion board, these two related posts from Katallus, and The New Post-literate, a blog about asemic writing.

Illustrations of the Shahnama, the Persian epic poem

Kattullus — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 02:26:29 -0800

The Princeton Shahnama Project is an "archive of book paintings--commonly known as Persian Miniatures--that were created to illustrate scenes from the Persian national epic, the Shahnama (the Book of Kings). The Shahnama is a poem of some 50,000 couplets that was composed by Abu'l Qasim Firdausi over a period of several decades in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries. The core of this archive is a fund of 277 illustrations from five illustrated manuscripts of the Shahnama that are housed in Princeton University's Firestone Library." The site also has the complete Shahnama in the Warner & Warner translation but here's another translation by Helen Zimmern Many illustrated versions of the Shahnama exist. You can see a few images of The Great Mongol Shahnama with some information on two webpages on the Metropolitan Museum website and at The Legacy of Genghis Khan website, part of a 16th Century copy can be browsed on the Asia Society website and it's also been turned into a comic book. MeFite and all around gentleman & scholar tellurian posted about Cambridge University's massive Shahnama Project last Nov. 3rd which has even more images.

Artists' Books Online

Kattullus — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 05:33:43 -0800

Artists' Books Online is a collection by the University of Virginia of artists' books. Artists' books are works of art that take the form of books and are often both text and visual art. Either way, they're awful interesting to look at. Here are some artbooks to get you started: How to Humiliate Your Peeping Tom by Susan Baker, The Word Made Flesh by Johanna Drucker, Life in a Book by Francois Deschamps, A.A.A.R.P. by Clifton Kirkpatrick Meador, opuntia is just another name for a prickly pear by Todd Walker and Black Dog White Bark by Erica Van Horn

Search me. Ezra liked foreign titles.

whir — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 05:18:55 -0800

Des Imagistes is an online version of Ezra Pound's influential 1914 anthology of Imagist poetry, which includes work by Pound, James Joyce, H. D., and William Carlos Williams. The anthology was placed online, apparently for the first time, by students at MIT. For those who prefer the look and feel of an old book, it is also available in convenient 21mb PDF format. via Grand Text Auto. The quote in this post's title is from an amusing anecdote related on the anthology's wikipedia page.

The Agrippa Files

Blazecock Pileon — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 01:32:36 -0800

The Agrippa Files presents a fairly expansive overview of the original and very rare 1992 art book Agrippa (a book of the dead), a collaboration between artist Dennis Ashbaugh, author William Gibson, and award-winning journalist Kevin Begos, Jr. that presciently explored the ephemeral nature of and decay of memories and information. The comprehensive site includes selected pages from handmade and other editions of the book, along with a simulation of disappearing ink-printed pages, as well as the source code, bit-level copy and emulation of William Gibson's self-destructing work of poetry, which can be read once before it irreversibly encrypts itself. The Agrippa Files also collects scholarly essays on the artworks, exploring meaning and impact.

Everything you wanted to know about pre-Columbian Central America but were afraid to ask lest your heart get ripped out and offered to Quetzalcoatl

Kattullus — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 12:49:00 -0800

The Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies is your one-stop shop for pre-Columbian Central America awesomeness. There are so, so many wondrous things on that site, I don't quite know where to begin. I suppose John Pohl's scholarly introduction is a natural place to start. But maybe you just don't have time to read anything and just want to dive into pretty, pretty pictures. Perhaps the most user-friendly databases are Justin Kerr's photographs Maya Vases (e.g. 1, 2, 3) and Pre-Columbian Portfolio (e.g. 1, 2a, 2b, 3). From there you can delve into the collection of Linda Schele's photographs (e.g. 1, 2) and drawings (e.g. 1, 2, 3). There are more image databases but let me direct you to the collection of old Maya, Aztec and Mixtec books which are simply stunning (e.g. 1, 2, 3, 4 [last link pdf]). You can read more about Mayan and Mixtec codices and download high resolution versions of the entire books. There are also Maya dictionaries, glyph guides, linguistic maps and a who's who. There is also classic Mayan and Aztec poetry in translation. I'm telling you, that's not even half of what this amazing site has to offer.

Paavo Haavikko (1931-2008)

misteraitch — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 01:28:14 -0800

Paavo Haavikko, one of Finland's (and Europe's) foremost poets, died earlier this week. As well as poetry, his seventy or so published works included essays, novels, plays for the stage, radio & TV, and opera libretti. (via) Unfortunately there is not a whole lot of Haavikko's poetry in English on-line. Besides the page of translations by Richard Sieburth linked above, there are a few snippets here and a few more translations here [.doc]. Haavikko's was a memorably aphoristic style, informed by a sceptical, pessimistic outlook: 'Every house has many builders, and is never finished.' 'Real delicacies are raw: oysters, salmon, and power.' 'When the tyrant is young. Everyone waits / for him to come to his senses. / Old. For him to die.' 'Don’t reminisce, / the dead / reminisce about the dead: / the flowers of Autumn, / snow-chilled, / about the flowers of Spring.' 'This is a world that will, in any case, be destroyed at some time. / Working for its destruction seems pointless. / It is impossible to save. Between these two facts, life must be lived...' 'In this cruel world it’s useless even to beg / not to be born again.' .

"All your better deeds shall be in water writ"

Kattullus — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:24:19 -0800

In August of 1820 one of the most beloved poets of his age came to the defense of another poet who was fast slipping into obscurity after a string of flops and a barrage of devastating reviews. That poet receding into oblivion? John Keats. That mightily loved poet? Barry Cornwall. Barry who?! Barry Cornwall was the nom de plume of solicitor Bryan Waller Procter, who won the admiration of a great many, including no lesser a reader than Pushkin. You can acquaint yourselves with this now almost wholly forgotten literary figure by reading volume 1 of his 1822 Poetical Works or other texts by and about him on Google Books. As for Keats, well... Keats is everywhere.

The Apparition of Enoch Soames

Iridic — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 10:58:47 -0800

In the summer of 1897, the Devil transported a minor Decadent poet named Enoch Soames one hundred years into the future to see what posterity would make of his work. The only witness to the affair was the parodist Max Beerbohm, whose account of Soames and his journey ensured that at 2:10 P.M. on June 7, 1997, some dozen pilgrims waited in the Round Reading Room of the British Museum to see the poet appear...

Art and poetry from the post-Enligthenment and pre-Modernist era

Kattullus — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:32:12 -0800

ArtMagick is a collection of art and poetry that roughly dates from after the Enlightenment but before Modernism. While the poetry section is extensive the main draw is the sites extensive art collection, which can be browsed by artist, art movement, title, theme or albums created by the site's users. So, forget the summer heat with some chilly pictures of winter, check out famous objects of devotion or search the archive.

Turkish Literary Delights

Wolfdog — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:52:25 -0800

A Mid-summer Night's Story - one of hundreds of novels, poems, and tales in English translation at Suat Karantay's Contemporary Turkish Literature pages. Also: Turkish Poetry in Translation (the side-by-side translations of Dağlarca are particularly well-done), and selected stories of childhood & youth from Turkish authors in the mid 20th century.