[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).
posted by Kattullus
on Apr 30, 2009 -
16 comments
April 13th is
Seamus Heaney's 70th birthday, and to celebrate, the Irish press have honored him in many ways. A Catholic from Northern Ireland, his early poems reflected his upbringing on a farm, but his later poems (and time in the States) spoke powerfully of 'the Troubles.' I thought he deserved a mention in the Blue.
[more inside]
posted by dbmcd
on Apr 12, 2009 -
13 comments
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.
[more inside]
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane
on Apr 5, 2009 -
15 comments
Poetry at
Tech, a
poetry program at Tech University in Georgia, presents readings (on YT)
by a number of fine contemporary poets. Some of my favourites:
Thomas Lux
(pt. 1, 2,
3), David
Kirby (pt. 1,
2,
3,
4,
5),
Tony
Hoagland (pt. 1,
2,
3)
and
Illya
Kaminsky. Complete
list of videos so far.
posted by troubles
on Apr 1, 2009 -
6 comments
April Fools Day, 2009 also means happy
60th birthday to one of my favorite musicians,
Gil Scott-Heron (
previously).
From his popular early works like the
heavily referenced "
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised", "
Whitey On The Moon", and "
The Bottle", to his continued productions and tours
over the decades, he's had a few
hurdles, but
never stopped. For more on his life and music, here's a great documentary from a few years back (MLYT):
pt. 1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6.
posted by p3t3
on Mar 31, 2009 -
26 comments
In 1916,
Hugo Ball would fulfill his own
dadaist manifesto by reciting his own nonsense poetry at the
Cabaret Voltaire (not that
Cabaret Voltaire), while wearing a
Cubist costume or a
cylinder with the number 13 covering his face. Ball's poem,
Gadji Beri Bimba, inspired the Talking Heads song,
I Zimbra, but his most famous poem is
Karawane, a pioneering example of
sound poetry. Karawane has more conventional
avant-garde versions on YouTube, but none is more surreal than the
recitation from memory by Marie Osmond (yes, that
Marie Osmond) from a
1980s broadcast of
Ripley's Believe It Or Not!
posted by jonp72
on Mar 9, 2009 -
21 comments
"He was sentenced to death after the military coup in 1980, a few months later he was pardoned but put under house arrest. While under arrest, he began to write a collection of poems; the aim of which was to create portraits of all the people he had ever met in his
life" [
Maninbo, or
Ten Thousand Lives]. To date, 26 volumes from the ongoing collection have been
published. Meet
Ko Un.
Ex-Buddhist Monk and one of
South Korea's greatest poets.
posted by vacapinta
on Feb 25, 2009 -
6 comments
The Drunken Boat publishes poetry from around the world, translations of poetry, reviews of poetry collections and anthologies, and interviews with well-known poets. The current issue features
Cave Canem poets, home for the many voices of African-American poetry and committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African-American poets.
posted by netbros
on Feb 22, 2009 -
3 comments
Explore the
History of the Ancient Greek World from the Neolithic to the Classical Period. Covering important topics, such as
Art and Architecture,
Mythology,
Wars,
Culture and Society, Poetry,
Olympics,
History Periods, Philosophy,
Playwrights, Kings and Rulers of Ancient Greece.
posted by netbros
on Feb 21, 2009 -
3 comments
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl is an Icelandic poet. He
translates Icelandic poetry into English (I particularly like his versions of Sigfús Daðason), and he has an interesting
interview on Icelandic poetry ("Curiously enough, back in the days the nationalists would sometimes write in danish. And writing in a foreign language was more or less seen as the only alternative to literature being a mere hobby until Halldór Laxness came along"). But really this is an elaborate excuse to post a link to
Höpöhöpö Böks: Köld öld Böks mjög örg, Ölböl örlög Böks! (Warning: My wife thought the linked video sounded like vomiting.) Via
wood s lot.
This one goes out to my man Kattullus; hope you can stick around! [more inside]
posted by languagehat
on Feb 17, 2009 -
12 comments
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.
[more inside]
posted by whir
on Dec 16, 2008 -
11 comments
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.
posted by Kattullus
on Nov 29, 2008 -
19 comments
The Great War Archive goes live today (November 11), the 90th anniversary of the Armistice. Launched by the University of Oxford in March 2008,
the initiative invited members of the general public to submit digital photographs, audio, film, documents, and stories that originated from the Great War. Although the dealine for submissions is past, photos can still be added to
the project's Flickr group.
posted by Abiezer
on Nov 10, 2008 -
19 comments
The Shahnama or “Book of Kings” is the longest poem ever written by a single author: Abu’l-Qasim Hasan Firdausi, from Tus in northeastern Iran. His epic work narrates the history of Iran (Persia) since the first king, Kayumars, who established his rule at the dawn of time, down to the conquest of Persia by the Muslim Arab invasions of the early 7th century A.D.
posted by tellurian
on Nov 3, 2008 -
18 comments
A man ambushed a stone. Caught it. Made it a prisoner.
Put it in a dark room and stood guard over it for the
rest of his life.
Russell Edson is an American poet. More of his work
here (beware popups). An
appreciation.
posted by generalist
on Oct 11, 2008 -
12 comments
