Very short poems you like
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Benny Bunter
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I wouldn't know where to start writing a poem about Spain or about anything really.
I think if i did try and write a poem it would be in Spanish. Sometimes a little idea or a line will come into my head in Spanish that I think sounds good, but I never write them down and always forget them. Maybe one day I'll give it a go. I wouldn't dare try in English though. When you've acquired a second language, there's always a pleasant strangeness to even everyday expressions that makes almost everything seem 'poetic'.
I think if i did try and write a poem it would be in Spanish. Sometimes a little idea or a line will come into my head in Spanish that I think sounds good, but I never write them down and always forget them. Maybe one day I'll give it a go. I wouldn't dare try in English though. When you've acquired a second language, there's always a pleasant strangeness to even everyday expressions that makes almost everything seem 'poetic'.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
"Almost any kind of 'strangeness' may produce an aesthetic effect, that is to say, an effect which, however slight, is qualitively the same as that of serious poetry. On examination, the sole condition is found to be thus, that the strangeness shall have an interior significance; it must be felt as arising from a different plane or mode of consciousness, and not merely as eccentricity of expression. It must be a strangeness of meaning. Thus, if I invent the meaningless word, hexterabonto, and insert it in a line of verse, it can add nothing (outside of its sound value) to the aesthetic effect.
Aristotle in his Poetics showed that he knew the aesthetic value of 'unfamiliar words', among which he included 'foreign expressions', in keeping diction above the 'ordinary' level; and anyone who has been to the trouble of learning a foreign language after the age at which he had reached a certain degree of aesthetic maturity, will know that aesthetic pleasure arises from the contemplation of quite ordinary expressions couched in a foreign idiom. It is important then to note that this is not, in so far as it is aesthetic, the pleasure of comparing different ways of saying the same thing, but the pleasure of realising the slightly different thing that is said. For, outside the purest abstractions and technicalities, no two languages can ever say quite the same thing."
- Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction
Aristotle in his Poetics showed that he knew the aesthetic value of 'unfamiliar words', among which he included 'foreign expressions', in keeping diction above the 'ordinary' level; and anyone who has been to the trouble of learning a foreign language after the age at which he had reached a certain degree of aesthetic maturity, will know that aesthetic pleasure arises from the contemplation of quite ordinary expressions couched in a foreign idiom. It is important then to note that this is not, in so far as it is aesthetic, the pleasure of comparing different ways of saying the same thing, but the pleasure of realising the slightly different thing that is said. For, outside the purest abstractions and technicalities, no two languages can ever say quite the same thing."
- Owen Barfield, Poetic Diction
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower—but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Make your choice, adventurous stranger;
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.
Strike the bell and bide the danger,
Or wonder, till it drives you mad,
What would have followed if you had.
sus
Moderator
I think you should DM me every time you get such a phrase in your head. And then I will compile and edit them, Pound to your Eliot
sus
Moderator
The pastoral I'm working on now has tones of Portuguese Spanish Italian Catalan Occitan French Latin it's all very lovely the foreignness is extremely helpful and you start to get a sense of the structure of our postRomanEmpire culture we all live in
I love how in Italy we say to each other "Graces, graces," and "Tranquility, tranquility." Or in French and Spanish, "Go to God," and "God willing."
I love how in Italy we say to each other "Graces, graces," and "Tranquility, tranquility." Or in French and Spanish, "Go to God," and "God willing."
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
The fact there are two Spanish verbs for 'to be' - 'ser' and 'estar' - is fascinating to me (I still occasionally get them mixed up after all these years), and Jorge Guillen plays with it a lot in his poems, following pholosopher José Ortega y Gasset's formulation:
Ser - being
Estar - being plus circumstance, or being in time.
An extract from Guillen's Más Allá (Beyond) which is an incredible poem:
Ser, nada más. Y basta.
Es la absoluta dicha.
¡Con la esencia en silencio
Tanto se identifica!
Soy, más, estoy. Respiro.
Lo profundo es el aire.
La realidad me inventa,
Soy su leyenda. ¡Salve!
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Fuck off Luka
I also love the weird/flawed and slightly sinister veneer of 'permanence' in these two verbs of being.
like say you want to say "i am sad right now" you use estoy, but if you want to say "I am a sad person, it's part of who i am" you use soy.
imagine the poetic potential of that dichotomy
mixed_biscuits
_________________________
Slavic languages distinguish similarly between 2 states of being but across the board, with many verbs having 2 completely different forms.
Benny Bunter
Well-known member
Yeah, the most counterintuitive one is you say 'está muerto' for 'he's dead' because death is a state rather than an essence. The difference isn't really to do with permanece at all.