Poetry

[version]

Halfway through a Mallarmé collection and it's not doing much. He sounds as though he'd be exactly my thing, but actually reading him hasn't grabbed me. Can't think of a single line or image which has really resonated. Perhaps it's down to the translation, but the reading experience has mostly been stiff and awkward. Not getting any sense of depth or energy to the stuff, just clunky lines on a page.

Had a similar experience with Baudelaire. I'd read him waiting for it to hit, but it never did.

A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance has been far and away the best thing in this. It's like he suddenly went up several gears and lines and phrases finally started jumping out at me.

'FROM THE DEPTH OF A SHIPWRECK'

'a corpse cut off by its arm from the secret it withholds'

'velvet crumpled by a dark burst of laughter'

'a bitter prince of the reef'

'a false mansion suddenly dispelled in mists'

'a rhythmic suspension of disaster'

'Every Thought emits a Dice Throw.'

 

[luka]

yeah its the only thing ive ever enjoyed of his

 

[version]

There's an earlier one where he's talking about organisms behaving differently in spring and I thought "Interesting. Where's this going?" and the next paragraph was about how he saw some sort of priest in a clearing wanking on the grass and rolling around on the floor, shagging it, or something.

 

[version]

A Throw of the Dice will Never Abolish Chance has been far and away the best thing in this. It's like he suddenly went up several gears and lines and phrases finally started jumping out at me.

'FROM THE DEPTH OF A SHIPWRECK'

'a corpse cut off by its arm from the secret it withholds'

'velvet crumpled by a dark burst of laughter'

'a bitter prince of the reef'

'a false mansion suddenly dispelled in mists'

'a rhythmic suspension of disaster'

'Every Thought emits a Dice Throw.'

NOTHING of the unforgettable crisis or else the deed might have been achieved keeping in view every result that is non human WILL HAVE TAKEN PLACE a commonplace upsurge is shedding absence OTHER THAN THE PLACE a lowly splashing of some kind as if to scatter the vacuous action at once which otherwise by its deceit would have established the loss in these indefinite regions of the swell where all reality is dissolved

 

[version]

Halfway through a Mallarmé collection and it's not doing much. He sounds as though he'd be exactly my thing, but actually reading him hasn't grabbed me. Can't think of a single line or image which has really resonated. Perhaps it's down to the translation, but the reading experience has mostly been stiff and awkward. Not getting any sense of depth or energy to the stuff, just clunky lines on a page.

Had a similar experience with Baudelaire. I'd read him waiting for it to hit, but it never did.

Winter Sun

Red-wigged Apollo
whose scarlet swordblades
used to prod the deep slumbers
of fauns drunk in the moss.

The brigand in bold garb
brocaded with fine gold
who slashed the grapes
till they bled purple.

Now merely a bald old Guritan
in his cold and bolted sky,
letting a rusty sunbeam
slap against his mauve breeches.

His aglet with no rosette
dangles sadly in the frosted firs,
and the falling snow is composed
of all his shredded challenges!

 

[version]

Warmed to him by the end, but still think Throw of the Dice towers over the rest. Wish he'd done more like that.

 

[version]

Working my way through this atm. Huge thing.

 

[luka]

do you like it? im allergic to it

 

[luka]

it's precious

 

[luka]

i was reading about dinosaurs

bleaurgh yuck

 

[luka]

despise it

 

[luka]

my enchiladas were delicious!

blurgh yuck

 

[Benny Bunter]

I bet gus would like it

 

[luka]

i was just thinking that. you shouldnt like it Gus.. stop liking it.
ooh i love plums aren't plums great.
fuck offfff

 

[luka]

mincing. faux naive. heinous. death to all of them.

 

[version]

do you like it? im allergic to it

Yeah, so far. I suppose it is a bit genteel though. I imagine people who read The New Yorker like him.

 

[version]

It's interesting reading him at the same time as Rimbaud as Rimbaud's like every page is on fire, Ashbery's like it was written in the garden of a large, expensive house.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Ashbery's like it was written in the garden of a large, expensive house.

Wallace Stevens is often like that. Love Stevens though.

Complacencies of the peignoir, and late
Coffee and oranges in a sunny chair,
And the green freedom of a cockatoo
Upon a rug mingle to dissipate
The holy hush of ancient sacrifice.

 

[luka]

that made me puke when i first came across it as a young luka. coffee and oranges is a bad combination.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Clear water in a brilliant bowl,
Pink and white carnations.