Very short poems you like

[Benny Bunter]

 

[craner]

You should get a copy of The Greek Anthology, Benny

 

[Benny Bunter]

I've thought that before, can you recommend a good edition?

 

[Benny Bunter]

Hardy was a serious Greek and Latin scholar wasn't he?

 

[Benny Bunter]

 

[Benny Bunter]

You can see why Pound rated him so highly

 

[craner]

I've thought that before, can you recommend a good edition?

Yes, the Peter Jay

 

[Benny Bunter]

Nice one, Craner, I found a cheap 2nd hand copy of the penguin edition on Amazon.

Might get the George Chapman translations of Homer too at some point, I like the few extracts I've read in that Ezra Pound anthology.

 

[Benny Bunter]

 

[jenks]

Well Sappho is the queen of the short poem as all we have are fragments.
Anne Carson does a lovely job on translating them https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Not,_Winter

 

[Benny Bunter]

There's so many layers to these little Hardy poems I've posted on this page. Very loose translations of ancient Greek, you've got Shakespeare, French, German and even Persian references there too, and looking forward to Pound's hard imagism and modernist ideas about literature existing on a single, timeless, plain, plus Hardy's own idiosyncrasies.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Yes, the Peter Jay

My copy arrived today, magnificent stuff.

Some say there are nine muses: but they're wrong.
Look at Craner of Barry; he makes ten.

After Plato

 

[Benny Bunter]

Leonidas:

 

[Benny Bunter]

 

[Benny Bunter]

Now, the timothy at Pemaquid
That rolled in heat is silver-tipped
And cold. The moon follows the sun like a French
Translation of a Russian poet.

 

[Benny Bunter]

 

[luka]

edmund stabbed a teenager to death today

 

[version]

The Song of the Demented Priest​

By John Berryman

I put those things there.—See them burn.
The emerald the azure and the gold
Hiss and crack, the blues & greens of the world
As if I were tired. Someone interferes
Everywhere with me. The clouds, the clouds are torn
In ways I do not understand or love.

Licking my long lips, I looked upon God
And he flamed and he was friendlier
Than you were, and he was small. Showing me
Serpents and thin flowers; these were cold.
Dominion waved & glittered like the flare
From ice under a small sun. I wonder.

Afterward the violent and formal dancers
Came out, shaking their pithless heads.
I would instruct them but I cannot now,—
Because of the elements. They rise and move,
I nod a dance and they dance in the rain
In my red coat. I am the king of the dead.

 

[linebaugh]

Not that short

 

[Corpsey]

Very true , line burger