I was going to guess longfellow because he also did an epic poem in trochaic tetrameter (another meter that doesn’t work well in english, though nowhere near as awkward as dactylic hex)
You know, the obsessive focus on stress patterns and the subsequent conservatism, and disdain for prose poetry (the highest form of poetry) even through the modern era is probably the main reason I don’t really vibe with most English poetry. More imagery, less drum soloing you nerds.
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wratch of A/chilles the
Get in the bin
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I like it as a sort of accelerationist gesture
I don’t think the modern era can be defined as an era where anyone has disdain for prose poetry. Almost all english poetry is unmetrical nowadays and has been since at least ezra pound
IMO, the real cool move is to sneak meter into prose in ways that almost no one will spot. One of my favorite sff writers, avram davidson, did this with some frequency
From Davidson’s “The Phoenix and the Mirror” for example:
the nigh shore was a dim green, and the off shore – far, far across the white wave seas – lay dun and gaunt. Clouds paced across the Heavens like giants’ sheep, newly washed and fleeces combed; their dark twins and double-goers grazed upon the seas beneath. Here and there from time to time a flash of lime-whitened houses and thin plumes or clouds of smoke marked the settlements of mortal men
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I don’t understand why, this is completely normal speaking prosody
Like my workplace, I cannot parse it unstressed
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Right but, and I know this is unfair and caused by deviant crosscultural hangups, all of it would be better without the vestigial versification which from my perspective looks like a lazy signifier of poetiness!
(And I do mean modern as in around the first half of the 20th century when prose poetry was a perfectly natural thing in german and french and T.S. Eliot hated it’s lack of musicality.)
ok wait i don’t really know anything about poetry outside of my anglophonic background, is the prose poetry you’re talking about just, like, well-composed prose? coz i agree that would be much better than people throwing line breaks into sentences at random
yes, it’s poetry in prose form i.e. not in verse
hilariously i was looking for an english translation of this one by rimbaud
Ville
Je suis un éphémère et point trop mécontent citoyen d’une métropole crue moderne parce que tout goût connu a été éludé dans les ameublements et l’extérieur des maisons aussi bien que dans le plan de la ville. Ici vous ne signaleriez les traces d’aucun monument de superstition. La morale et la langue sont réduites à leur plus simple expression, enfin ! Ces millions de gens qui n’ont pas besoin de se connaître amènent si pareillement l’éducation, le métier et la vieillesse, que ce cours de vie doit être plusieurs fois moins long que ce qu’une statistique folle trouve pour les peuples du continent. Aussi comme, de ma fenêtre, je vois des spectres nouveaux roulant à travers l’épaisse et éternelle fumée de charbon, — notre ombre des bois, notre nuit d’été ! — des Érinnyes nouvelles, devant mon cottage qui est ma patrie et tout mon cœur puisque tout ici ressemble à ceci, — la Mort sans pleurs, notre active fille et servante, un Amour désespéré, et un joli Crime piaulant dans la boue de la rue.
and the only one i could find online was
City
I am an ephemeral
and a not too discontented citizen
of a metropolis considered modern
because all known taste
has been evaded in the furnishings
and the exterior of the houses
as well as in the layout of the city.Here you will fail to detect the least trace
of any monument of superstition.
Morals and language
are reduced to their simplest expression,
at last! The way these millions of people,
who do not even need to know each other,
manage their education, business,
and old age is so identical
that the course of their lives
must be several times less long
than that which a mad statistics
calculates for the people of the continent.And from my window I see new specters rolling through
the thick eternal smoke–
our woodland shade, our summer night!–
new Eumenides in front of my cottage
which is my country and all my heart
since everything here resembles it,–
Death without tears,
our diligent daughter and servant,
a desperate Love, and a pretty
Crime howling in the mud in the street.
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english isn’t as singsongy as french so linebreaks serve a punctuative purpose that can’t easily be replicated by anything else (parentheticals notwithstanding (but who wants to read so many parentheticals))
i just really feel like line breaks should require a license y’know. like you were just talking about how good sneaking meter into prose is! i think the tools are available to us
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I’m not performing in the same way, but watching this vid of Emily Wilson reading her translation of the Illiad (didn’t know she did this!) it did help me to realize I could like slow down, match emotion to what is being said or what is going on, and stop worrying about keeping pace with whatever notion of rhythm I am trying to hold onto. Usually just feeling the words and thinking less about reading the words gets me where I need to be. Still practicing.
The Iliad’s emotional tenor is so much easier for me to grasp than the Odyssey’s, so far, just at book 3 with Nestor THE HORSE LORD, Lord of Horses.
I’m desperate for a bit of psychological substance to grasp, and I just can’t fish it out of what Telemachus is doing by this point. But historically I also tend to extend no sympathy to characters who are young men trying to prove themselves faced with harsh challenges like Wesley Crusher.
Telemachus is young. Small in his own home, disrespected. But set on a path by fate for great things. And he’s going to the palaces of kings, far from home, uncertain, probably frightened, and he speaks to them and asserts he is the son of a God-chosen war hero, the dear friend of these people. This boy? But in his eyes… his clever speech… they come to see a true image of Odysseus within him.
That is something I am going to try to remember when reading his lines out loud.
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imo it completely destroys the effect of getting lost in a run-on sentence which should be read monotonously if you please
as beckett said, french makes it easier to write without style
whole lotta full stops and exclamations, — not to mention em dashes — for a run-on sentence!
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well no it’s several run-on sentences with grammar folding in on itself! you can get lost in them in turn
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i agree that prose poems r beast mode but also kinda disagree that theres a disdain for them. not a true poetry head but every time ive gone 2 poetry readings “professional” or open-mic-y dominant trends r either prose or things that sound like tweets.
two recent-ish american poets who come to mind for me in terms of working in prose[if not exclusively] & being influential/well-received r ws merwin & john ashbery.
who, myabe this veers the conversation on topic, both def have explicit riffs on the oddysey. i found a anne carson prose poem titled after the oddysey/ashbery (minor spoilers i guess + published in 2018 new yorker so ur mileage may vary)
*Short Talk On Homer And John Ashbery*
In the twenty-fourth book of Homer’s Odyssey the souls of the suitors all go down to Hades. Hermes leads them, gibbering like bats, past various underworld landmarks, the white rock of Leukas, etc., and on their way they pass the δῆμον ὀνείρων, which Homer leaves undescribed and unexplained. Δῆμον means “people, population or country.” Όνείρων means “dream.” A demographic of dreams. My friend Stanley Lombardo, translator, translates it “the dream deme.” But so how would this work? Is it a big file catalogue with all the dreams waiting in alphabetical order to go appear inside some head at night? Or standing around easy with drinks and anecdotes? Or so bored with signifying they’re lying on the ground in heaps? Do they have a gift shop? Does it sell books by Adorno? Are there factions and animosities and a row of chairs like an audition? A smell of sweat? Exhaustion and tears? Or is it blissful, beyond meaning, barefoot, organized by gentle bells? Do they have to practice all the time to keep in dream shape or is it like having perfect pitch? Are there dream trees to shade them and small dream boys who climb up and sit quiet while others search for them gradually losing heart? Do their dream streets fill with mobs drifting fast and slow at once over the sidewalk, each sealed into a private membrane as clear and dense and general as death? If there are dogs in the dreams do they need to be walked? If Freud is there (“I know I am overdue!”) is he aloof or enjoying himself? Down the road from the summer cottage of my friend Stanley Lombardo is a farm where emus and llamas graze. On the fence a sign informs us that “llamas hum to their young.” Do not worry, the sign implies, humming is O.K. Does the demographic of dreams emit a worrying sound? Emus are in appearance plucky and plunging creatures, mostly torso. Llamas are stately, with an air of deep comedy, and larger than they seem. “You hit one of those you can say goodbye to your car,” commented Stanley Lombardo, translator. He also told me that llamas never stop moving their ears even when sleeping. Whether they stop moving them when sleeping inside a dream is a question to be considered in a forthcoming Short Talk on Stanley Lombardo, where I hope to compare Stanley Lombardo with John Ashbery as a personality disposed to careless joy in almost any situation. About a year ago I attended an interview in which John Ashbery was present via Skype due to being almost ninety years old and tired. The interviewers were a little afraid of him. There were two interviewers. They groped for a way to engage a conversation. One mentioned a book she claimed John Ashbery had written, entitled “Light.” Ashbery denied this. She insisted. She had the book at home on her bookshelf. Ultimately they decided it must have been an issue of ARTnews magazine on this theme. “So, John, can you say something about that?” asked the other interviewer, to which Ashbery after a very long pause replied, “Light. What would we do without it?”
im bravely raising my hand
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This thing starts to pick up at book 4. I’m having a blast reading to my partner and cat!!
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I actually started reading, too, but I’m juggling other bokks as well so my pace is kind of slow. The Elizabethan English of the Chapman translation really nudges me towards making comparisons between Hamlet and Telemachus. They both have a burden of maintaining honor in their households after their fathers go away. Both seem pretty bad about comforting their moms.
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