luka

Well-known member
and this is pope

"Now to the shores we bend, a mournful train,
Climb the tall bark, and launch into the main;
At once the mast we rear, at once unbind
The spacious sheet, and stretch it to the wind;
Then pale and pensive stand, with cares oppress'd,
And solemn horror saddens every breast.
A freshening breeze the magic power supplied,
While the wing'd vessel flew along the tide;
Our oars we shipp'd; all day the swelling sails
Full from the guiding pilot catch'd the gales.

"Now sunk the sun from his aerial height,
And o'er the shaded billows rush'd the night;
When lo! we reach'd old Ocean's utmost bounds,
Where rocks control his waves with ever-during mounds.

"There in a lonely land, and gloomy cells,
The dusky nation of Cimmeria dwells;
The sun ne'er views the uncomfortable seats,
When radiant he advances, or retreats:
Unhappy race! whom endless night invades,
Clouds the dull air, and wraps them round in shades.

"The ship we moor on these obscure abodes;
Disbark the sheep, an offering to the gods;
And, hellward bending, o'er the beach descry
The doleful passage to the infernal sky.
The victims, vow'd to each Tartarian power,
Eurylochus and Perimedes bore.

"Here open'd hell, all hell I here implored,
And from the scabbard drew the shining sword:
And trenching the black earth on every side,
A cavern form'd, a cubit long and wide.
New wine, with honey-temper'd milk, we bring,
Then living waters from the crystal spring:
O'er these was strew'd the consecrated flour,
And on the surface shone the holy store.

"Now the wan shades we hail, the infernal gods,
To speed our course, and waft us o'er the floods:
So shall a barren heifer from the stall
Beneath the knife upon your altars fall;
So in our palace, at our safe return,
Rich with unnumber'd gifts the pile shall burn;
So shall a ram, the largest of the breed,
Black as these regions, to Tiresias bleed.

"Thus solemn rites and holy vows we paid
To all the phantom-nations of the dead;
Then died the sheep: a purple torrent flow'd,
And all the caverns smoked with streaming blood.
When lo! appear'd along the dusky coasts,
Thin, airy shoals of visionary ghosts:

https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Odyssey_(Pope)/Book_XI
 

woops

is not like other people
Is it Old English.

yeah it deliberately echoes his translation of the seafarer i think (assume ive got the chronology right)
it's about origins so the old english goes in there alongside homer. lots of old english alliteration

Cool but answering the question is not really the point. It's the wonder of what is this that I, anyway, like. Also I assumed Odysseus until he is referred to in the third person towards the end. so there are answers you're right. But my point is, as I said, you don't need to know much to think wow.
 

woops

is not like other people
I've only just read the Chapman extract so it might need time to sink in. It took me 15 lines to notice he was rhyming. Towards the end this started putting me off. Some of the rhymes seem pat and thus old-fashioned; it doesn't have the weight, or authority, of Pound.
 

woops

is not like other people
Pound is very much in control of an out of control, jagged, line scheme and metre, if those are the terms.
 

luka

Well-known member
kenner makes a big deal out of each generation getting a homer of their own, a remade poem for their own sensibilities.
 

luka

Well-known member
i only pasted those translations to show how closely pounds cleaves to homer. hes not making it up. and to illustrate kenners point.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
I was reading Fagles translation (having it read to me by Ian McKellen) and I often wondered what difference that made, because I really could never get into the Odyssey. I also wondered what difference McKellen made, because at a certain point he really got on my tits.

http://www.boyle.kyschools.us/UserFiles/88/The Odyssey.pdf


“Now down we came to the ship at the water’s edge,
we hauled and launched her into the sunlit breakers first,
stepped the mast in the black craft and set our sail
and loaded the sheep aboard, the ram and ewe,
then we ourselves embarked, streaming tears,
our hearts weighed down with anguish …
But Circe the awesome nymph with lovely braids
who speaks with human voice, sent us a hardy shipmate,
yes, a fresh following wind ruffling up in our wake,
bellying out our sail to drive our blue prow on as we,
securing the running gear from stem to stern, sat back
while the wind and helmsman kept her true on course.
The sail stretched taut as she cut the sea all day
and the sun sank and the roads of the world grew dark.
And she made the outer limits, the Ocean River’s bounds
where Cimmerian people have their homes—their realm and city
shrouded in mist and cloud. The eye of the Sun can never
flash his rays through the dark and bring them light,
not when he climbs the starry skies or when he wheels
back down from the heights to touch the earth once more—
an endless, deadly night overhangs those wretched men.
There, gaining that point, we beached our craft
and herding out the sheep, we picked our way
by the Ocean’s banks until we gained the place
that Circe made our goal...'

I looked it up and the original Odyssey doesn't rhyme, so presumably the Fagles translation is more 'authentic' in this regard at least. (Milton's argument re: epic poetry not rhyming comes to mind)
 
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Corpsey

bandz ahoy
'Men many, mauled with bronze lance heads'

the Pound - 50 Cent connection

(shame it wasn't with 50 pence lolz)
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
A soft air fans the cloud apart; there comes
A glimpse of that dark world where I was born.
Once more the old mysterious glimmer steals
From thy pure brows, and from thy shoulders pure,
And bosom beating with a heart renew'd.
Thy cheek begins to redden thro' the gloom,
Thy sweet eyes brighten slowly close to mine,
Ere yet they blind the stars, and the wild team
Which love thee, yearning for thy yoke, arise,
And shake the darkness from their loosen'd manes,
And beat the twilight into flakes of fire.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
"a single soul that lacks a sweet crystalline cry"

Lines like this in poetry, where the sound really does sing, any more examples?

"Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven's gate"
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Issues from the hand of time the simple soul
Irresolute and selfish, misshapen, lame,
Unable to fare forward or retreat,
Fearing the warm reality, the offered good,
Denying the importunity of the blood,
Shadow of its own shadows, spectre in its own gloom,
Leaving disordered papers in a dusty room;
Living first in the silence after the viaticum.
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
And in the beginning was love. Love made a sphere:
all things grew within it; the sphere then encompassed
beginnings and endings, beginning and end. Love
had a compass whose whirling dance traced out a
sphere of love in the void: in the center thereof
rose a fountain.

 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
and a little film about the man's life, it's calming and soothing


"are you a visitor?" asked the dog, "yes," i answered. "only a visitor?" asked the dog. "yes," i answered. "take me with you," said the dog.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Stuck Auden reading Auden on Spotify while I was doing he ironing or something and

I think it's more useful hearing poetry you don't understand than poetry you do, in terms of understanding the primal appeal of it, on the level of rhythm and sound.

Poetry is more like music than mathematics, and is incantatory, I'm only fitfully able to understand this.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
A recent powerful poetry paroxysm

Reading Wordsworth's Titern Abbey and finding the feeling and thinking I had in the afterglow of acid replicated and made rhythm (as it should be)

... That time is past,
And all its aching joys are now no more,
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this
Faint I, nor mourn nor murmur; other gifts
Have followed; for such loss, I would believe,
Abundant recompense. For I have learned
To look on nature, not as in the hour
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing oftentimes
The still sad music of humanity,
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample power
To chasten and subdue.—And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean and the living air,
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man:
A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.
 

luka

Well-known member
Selected lines from the kirghiz disaster.
JH Prynne


"Juniper, moss agate, jurassic boredom glows in the empty waiting room"

"searching the band for another station reveals new liassic beds near the previous shelf."

"They are zealots in the park all over"

"Then I eat a care-
ful selection of food.
My fork skim thought-
fully from side to
side. I keep up a
steady munch"

"He now drops the heavenly coin in the doorway"

"So that Jerome springs back into place, your friendly dental technician trailing his new bridge-work"

"The redeemed corset strains into view again and we perk up finally by the counter"
 

luka

Well-known member
the ancestors of Kyrgyz tribes had their origin in the most ancient tribal unions of Sakas/Scythians, Wusun/Issedones, Dingling, Mongols and Huns
 
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