Poetry anthology recommendations please

[Benny Bunter]

I got a bilingual edition, so most of the more extreme-verging-on-daft composite word translation choices (by Pierre Joris) are validated when you see the German alongside the English.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Can't believe no one recommended me Peter Jay's Greek Anthology till now (bless you @craner but you took your time). It's amazing, everyone should read it. The way it's put together and the quality of the translations is so impressive. There's only a handful by Ezra Pound in there but I'm assuming all of the other translators in there were influenced by his approach, there's none of that flowery consciously 'poetical' shit in there, it's all absolutely rock hard.

Why doesn't Craner contribute more to the poetry threads?

 

[yyaldrin]

Pierre Joris/Jeremy Rothenberg are total heroes aren't they? As are all skilled dedicated translators imo, but these two have done so much and have cast the net so wide. Ended up ordering that late Celan collection even though it was quite expensive cause I trust Joris to have done a good job, and he's a good commentator/critic too, so I know the intro essay and the notes will be well worth reading.

Read some interviews with Joris where he says his approach is to go for the most literal translations possible and to hell with smoother the more target audience-orientated approach, and I think this works very well with modern Avant Garde poetry that's as mad as fuck in the original language anyway. He's got no qualms about making difficult stuff even more difficult, and I admire that. Poetry in translation is mind-expanding like nothing else if done well. Like with that Tamuzzi Poets gear I read the other day, love that stuff and I'm hardly gonna learn Arabic am I?

Sorry to bash on about it @woops but that conversation has got me thinking is all.

is this the copy of the celan book you have? if so could you check for me if it mentions who made the cover art? i can't figure out the scribble on the bottom.

 

[Benny Bunter]

is this the copy of the celan book you have? if so could you check for me if it mentions who made the cover art? i can't figure out the scribble on the bottom.

Yeah, that's the one. The art's by his wife, Gisèle Lestrange.

 

[0bleak]

is she a fan of Black Metal?

 

[yyaldrin]

Yeah, that's the one. The art's by his wife, Gisèle Lestrange.

thanks! i hadn't heard of her. i'm reading now that some of her etchings and drawings served as inspiration for celan's poems. does the book contain more of her illustrations? i like this kinda stuff a lot. could you imagine them to be inspirations for the poems?

 

[woops]

there was another woman in his life, ingeborg bachmann

 

[Benny Bunter]

.

thanks! i hadn't heard of her. i'm reading now that some of her etchings and drawings served as inspiration for celan's poems. does the book contain more of her illustrations? i like this kinda stuff a lot. could you imagine them to be inspirations for the poems?

I think Celan used to name her etchings, and she provided art for a few of his poems, not sure if her work inspired his poems in any direct way or not. I do think they compliment each other somehow.
There are definitely lots of poems about her and their relationship, but very obliquely.

At one point he had a psychotic episode and threatened her, and stabbed himself through the lung with a letter opener, so they lived apart in the last few years of his life, before he threw himself in the Seine.

This is the only other thing of hers in that book, sorry, not a great photo, but anyway...

 

[vershy versh]

Just seen this one on a photo of somebody's bookshelf.

 

[sus]

Poetry in translation is mind-expanding like nothing else if done well.

Can you post some of the things you've found most mind expanding?

 

[Benny Bunter]

Can you post some of the things you've found most mind expanding?

Haha, dunno, 'mind-expanding' sounds like it needs to be really cosmic or psychedelic or something, which isn't really what I meant. I think all great, or just interesting, poetry should expand your mind really, mainly through what Owen Barfield identifies as 'strangeness' as one of the main sources of pleasure you get from reading it for the first time.

As for translated stuff, Luka's recommendation of the first two volumes of Poems For The Millennium (especially vol 1) is great, just cos of the sheer breadth and scale of the selections from just about every language you can think of is so impressive. And cos it's all modernist/post modernist there's a very high 'wtf the have I just read' shock of the new effect throughout.

But I'll have a think of some of my own favourites and get back to you.

 

[Benny Bunter]

@sus Off the top of my head, translated stuff that has really stuck with me that I've read over the past few years:

Rimbaud: A season in Hell/Illuminations (prose poetry - the more formal stuff doesn't translate well)

George Chapman's Homer

That Greek anthology Craner recommended upthread

Arthur Golding's translation of Metamorphoses

The King James Bible version of the Song of Solomon (seems out of place with the rest of the bible cos of its eroticism). Also, the Psalms,and the Book of Common Prayer.

Ezra Pound's version of troubador poetry (technically stunning), the Seafarer from Anglo Saxon, and the various bits from Chinese, Latin and Greek he did.

Tennyson's translation of The Battle of Brunanbur, described by Borges as "Even more Anglo Saxon than the original"

Paul Celan translated by Pierre Joris

Stephane Mallarme - Throw of the Dice Never Will Abolish Chance, from the PFM anthology

Paul Valéry's more free verse stuff translates well, but not the formal poetry (cemetery by the sea is amazing and I have a great Spanish version, but it doesn't work in English)

Can't go wrong with Fitzgerald's Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam

I gather there's decent Rilke English translations out there, but I haven't properly investigated him yet, ask @luka

But invest in that PFM anthology and dive in, it's well worth it.

 

[mixed_biscuits]

Anthologies of American poetry collated by Oscar Williams.