poetry

SYLVIA PLATH'S UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 16:09:18 +0000

Beverley Knowles finds another side to the poet's tragic talent at an exhibition of her drawings ... read more »

PHILIP LEVINE, POET OF DRUDGERY

Lee Siegel — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 13:39:09 +0000

Philip Levine has just been anointed America's poet laureate. Lee Siegel explains why this is the perfect time for Levine's brand of anger ... read more »

THE TIRED REVOLUTIONARY

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 09:14:04 +0000

Remembering the furious poetry of Gil Scott-Heron ... read more »

IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE SOUND

Ann Wroe — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:40:23 +0000

The King James Bible is 400 years old this year, and the music of its sentences is still ringing out. But what exactly made it so good? Ann Wroe gives chapter and verse...
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THE POET AND THE PLANTSMAN

Julie Kavanagh — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 22:28:32 +0000

In 1989 James Fenton startled his friends by moving to a derelict farm to set about making a spectacular garden. Now he has surprised them again by selling up. Julie Kavanagh talks to Fenton and friends-and his gardener, Mike Collins ... read more »

REMEMBERING VIC CHESNUTT

Daniel Arizona — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:50:46 +0000

Daniel Arizona considers the life and music of a southern bard who never quite achieved the fame he deserved ... read more »

WALLACE STEVENS, ARMCHAIR VISIONARY

Ryan Ruby — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:31:01 +0000

When Wallace Stevens died, few of his Connecticut insurance colleagues even knew he was a poet. With the recent release of his "Selected Poems", Ryan Ruby revisits a man who proved that to be a great poet, no great experience is necessary ... read more »

HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE FRANK O'HARA

Ryan Ruby — Sun, 31 Aug 2008 17:59:49 +0000

NOTES ON AN EXUBERANT POET | August 31st 2008
National Archives
There was a time when Ryan Ruby would've taken a punch for broody, gloomy T.S. Eliot. But years in the thrum of New York City have encouraged a taste for something more jazzy and irreverent ...

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GRACE PALEY'S "FIDELITY"

Ariel Ramchandani — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 00:05:34 +0000

POETRY ABOUT AGING | January 29th 2008

Random Rog/Flickr

Ariel Ramchandani finds a melancholic honesty in Grace Paley's last book of poems. Paley wrote with the detachment of a woman near death, punctuating her work with the occasional bitter laugh ...

Special to MORE INTELLIGENT LIFE

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I WOULD GIVE ALL METAPHORS FOR ONE WORD

Robert Cottrell — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 19:32:50 +0000

AND OTHER THOUGHTS ABOUT POETRY IN TRANSLATION

The effect of a succesful translation is like walking through the streets of a foreign city and finding that you can understand what is being said around you, though you also know the language is not your own. By Ariel Ramchandani ...

From our arts blog, MOREOVER

DAVID ORR'S article on Zbigniew Herbert in The New York Times Book Review got me thinking about translation. I believe--along, I imagine, with many other people-- that Poland's poets are among the best in the world. And yet, like many others, I do not experience these poets in Polish. As Mr Orr says: "Of course, for most of us, discovering ‘the Poland that is real’means reading works translated from Polish."

If you ask me, Polish sure sounds good in English. It is perhaps a conceit of an English speaker, as well as a testament to the skill of the poets and translators, that I feel this way. I have not read a single poem by a Polish poet in Polish--or in any language other than English, for that matter. But I do know that a good translation makes the reader aware of what a poem means, and at the same time makes the reader aware that it is not English she is reading. In this way a successful translation is like walking through the streets of a foreign city and realising that you can understand what everyone is saying around you, if only just barely. read more »