Poetry Fanats 2008

[Argammon]

Well, the ones I chose as good are from lyrics that are generally regarded as some of the greatest in the history of modern music. So if you want to have a different opinion, that's fine, but difficult to take seriously. It's like if I had quoted Shakespeare and you had just written it off as bad. It says more about you than Shakespeare...

Look, I don't disagree with you about Shakespeare. But let's have a small argument about logic, ok?

What you are basically saying is that the majority is always right. What the majority regards as "good" must be good. Let's take a look at politics and it's easy to see you are wrong.
Or do you really think Bush was the best option for the USA just because he got elected?
Ok he didn't really have a majority but you see my point. Look at other countries. There are so many cases the majority makes stupid decisions.

So if someone disagrees with the majority it does not necessarily imply his taste is misguided.

[BonzaiJoe]

Not really, your argument is beside the point. If you were someone with an authority on the matter, or if you had put up an argument for the case, I could take it seriously despite the majority.
In any case, your personal opinion is also irrelevant to the point. I can't exclude that there are some people with very strange taste who think that Morrissey and Ian Curtis are bad lyricist, just like some people will dislike Shakespeare, but I feel that I can still list them as good poets, to support the point I was making to Akoss.

As for George Bush, actually if you ask in the whole world, I think you will only find less than 10% to call him a good president, and about 80% to call him bad. Even in both the 2000 and the 2004 elections, only the Americans (and perhaps some selected other countries) supported him. And even that was only about half of the voting Americans (about one fourth of the total amount of Americans with the right to vote). But that's a different discussion...

[Argammon]

My statement was more of a general nature. That the majority is, often, not right. Now we can argue about single cases whether the majority is right or not. It's useless. I just don't buy the argument that if the majority thinks X is good. Then X is really good.

About poetry. To be honest I never really dealt with that matter. So you can freely ignore my opinion here. "CTG has a point here" was just some kind of joke. Poetry is not my pair of shoes at all and I don't think I can argue beyond what I subjectively like or dislike.

So no reason for hard feelings here. 

[Krys TOFF]

Who cares (...) who was the king of z country in 1800 etc etc...

Such a strange sentence from you after the "history" discussion we had about events that caused the disband of Hungarian empire long before we were all born (yes, all, even AbuRaf )

Science is supposed to improve life quality, not only delaying dead.

There are 2 categories of science :
- research
- application
Research is pure search for knowledge and understanding, Application is adaptation of research discoveries to every day application. Improving life quality (medically speaking) and extend life are both applications. What we do at my job is also application, mainly application of polymers chemistry.

Pure research for me can also be considered as a part of art, or science poetry if you prefer. What could be the application(s) of knowing the Universe origin (big bang or any other theory) ? What could be application of the too low neutrino level coming from the sun ? Nothing for our daily life. But some guys are living for that. They are poets of science, searching for a knowledge without any application.
Personnally, I prefer science when it's focused on what could improve our world. Instead of spending billions of dollar for creating Hubble (for example), this money would have more more useful if it had been used for medical research to cure diseases (especially "orphan diseases", these diseases that had no financial interest for laboratories because too few people on Earth are concerned), irrigate the deserts, stop the work of children in some countries that still apply it, ...
But anyway I can't be angry about pure researchers, they have this part of science devotion madness that make them as crazy as poets somehow.

You know, poetry is not only adding words to create rhymes and use allegories to talk about things. Poetry can be a way of thinking our lives.

[BonzaiJoe]

My statement was more of a general nature. That the majority is, often, not right. Now we can argue about single cases whether the majority is right or not. It's useless. I just don't buy the argument that if the majority thinks X is good. Then X is really good.

About poetry. To be honest I never really dealt with that matter. So you can freely ignore my opinion here. "CTG has a point here" was just some kind of joke. Poetry is not my pair of shoes at all and I don't think I can argue beyond what I subjectively like or dislike.

So no reason for hard feelings here. 

Fair enough... You are right that the multitude isn't always right, of course. But I guess the multitude will agree on that, too...

[CTG]

Let's decrease the level with a nice BÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖÖFF!!!

[BonzaiJoe]

Let's raise the level again with one of my favourite poets, which I sadly have to read in a translated version. But it says something about it that it's so great even in english!

ARTHUR RIMBAUD - THE DRUNKEN BOAT (LE BATEAU IVRE)



As I was floating down unconcerned Rivers
I no longer felt myself steered by the haulers:
Gaudy Redskins had taken them for targets
Nailing them naked to coloured stakes.

I cared nothing for all my crews,
Carrying Flemish wheat or English cottons.
When, along with my haulers those uproars were done with
The Rivers let me sail downstream where I pleased.

Into the ferocious tide-rips
Last winter, more absorbed than the minds of children,
I ran! And the unmoored Peninsulas
Never endured more triumphant clamourings

The storm made bliss of my sea-borne awakenings.
Lighter than a cork, I danced on the waves
Which men call eternal rollers of victims,
For ten nights, without once missing the foolish eye of the harbor lights!

Sweeter than the flesh of sour apples to children,
The green water penetrated my pinewood hull
And washed me clean of the bluish wine-stains and the splashes of vomit,
Carring away both rudder and anchor.

And from that time on I bathed in the Poem
Of the Sea, star-infused and churned into milk,
Devouring the green azures; where, entranced in pallid flotsam,
A dreaming drowned man sometimes goes down;

Where, suddenly dyeing the bluenesses, deliriums
And slow rhythms under the gleams of the daylight,
Stronger than alcohol, vaster than music
Ferment the bitter rednesses of love!

I have come to know the skies splitting with lightnings, and the waterspouts
And the breakers and currents; I know the evening,
And Dawn rising up like a flock of doves,
And sometimes I have seen what men have imagined they saw!

I have seen the low-hanging sun speckled with mystic horrors.
Lighting up long violet coagulations,
Like the performers in very-antique dramas
Waves rolling back into the distances their shiverings of venetian blinds!

I have dreamed of the green night of the dazzled snows
The kiss rising slowly to the eyes of the seas,
The circulation of undreamed-of saps,
And the yellow-blue awakenings of singing phosphorus!

I have followed, for whole months on end, the swells
Battering the reefs like hysterical herds of cows,
Never dreaming that the luminous feet of the Marys
Could force back the muzzles of snorting Oceans!

I have struck, do you realize, incredible Floridas
Where mingle with flowers the eyes of panthers
In human skins! Rainbows stretched like bridles
Under the seas' horizon, to glaucous herds!

I have seen the enormous swamps seething, traps
Where a whole leviathan rots in the reeds!
Downfalls of waters in the midst of the calm
And distances cataracting down into abysses!

Glaciers, suns of silver, waves of pearl, skies of red-hot coals!
Hideous wrecks at the bottom of brown gulfs
Where the giant snakes devoured by vermin
Fall from the twisted trees with black odours!

I should have liked to show to children those dolphins
Of the blue wave, those golden, those singing fishes.
- Foam of flowers rocked my driftings
And at times ineffable winds would lend me wings.

Sometimes, a martyr weary of poles and zones,
The sea whose sobs sweetened my rollings
Lifted its shadow-flowers with their yellow sucking disks toward me
And I hung there like a kneeling woman...

Almost an island, tossing on my beaches the brawls
And droppings of pale-eyed, clamouring birds,
And I was scudding along when across my frayed cordage
Drowned men sank backwards into sleep!

But now I, a boat lost under the hair of coves,
Hurled by the hurricane into the birdless ether,
I, whose wreck, dead-drunk and sodden with water,
neither Monitor nor Hanse ships would have fished up;

Free, smoking, risen from violet fogs,
I who bored through the wall of the reddening sky
Which bears a sweetmeat good poets find delicious,
Lichens of sunlight [mixed] with azure snot,

Who ran, speckled with lunula of electricity,
A crazy plank, with black sea-horses for escort,
When Julys were crushing with cudgel blows
Skies of ultramarine into burning funnels;

I who trembled, to feel at fifty leagues' distance
The groans of Behemoth's rutting, and of the dense Maelstroms
Eternal spinner of blue immobilities
I long for Europe with it's aged old parapets!

I have seen archipelagos of stars! and islands
Whose delirious skies are open to sailor:
- Do you sleep, are you exiled in those bottomless nights,
Million golden birds, O Life Force of the future? -

But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the
Black cold pool where into the scented twilight
A child squatting full of sadness, launches
A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.

I can no more, bathed in your langours, O waves,
Sail in the wake of the carriers of cottons,
Nor undergo the pride of the flags and pennants,
Nor pull past the horrible eyes of the hulks.

[Krys TOFF]

one of my favourite poets, which I sadly have to read in a translated version.

ARTHUR RIMBAUD

Only one solution : learn French.

But it says something about it that it's so great even in english!

Anyway, I'm curious to learn your interpretation of this poem, even if this translation is sometimes quite bad.
There are 3 "levels" of interpretation of this poem. I'm curious to see which one is yours.

[lised]

Rimbaud <3  <3  <3 

(sorry for the pointless post)

[BonzaiJoe]

These two stanzas are the best. The height of all poetry:

But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the
Black cold pool where into the scented twilight
A child squatting full of sadness, launches
A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.



Interpretation: later. For now, I have heeded to Krys' advice, and taken out my "Le Petit Prince" and a French-Danish dictionary. I must learn that language.

[lised]

These two stanzas are the best. The height of all poetry:

But, truly, I have wept too much! The Dawns are heartbreaking.
Every moon is atrocious and every sun bitter:
Sharp love has swollen me up with heady langours.
O let my keel split! O let me sink to the bottom!

If there is one water in Europe I want, it is the
Black cold pool where into the scented twilight
A child squatting full of sadness, launches
A boat as fragile as a butterfly in May.



Interpretation: later. For now, I have heeded to Krys' advice, and taken out my "Le Petit Prince" and a French-Danish dictionary. I must learn that language.

Cool! I have spend the whole day on Goethe's Römische Elegien (extremely difficult German ) and tomorrow I'll try to translate a bit of "La Comédie Humaine" (Balzac)   

[JTK]

Oh, Goethe... But I really love this one:

Ein Gleiches

Über allen Gipfeln
Ist Ruh',
In allen Wipfeln
Spürest du
Kaum einen Hauch;

Die Vögelein schweigen im Walde.
Warte nur, balde
Ruhest du auch.

[BonzaiJoe]

We had that one in one of our first lectures... We were told that every german kid has read that in secondary school. Anyway, disregarding Faust, which I have not read, I still hold the "Die Leiden des jungen Werthers" is his greatest work.

[CTG]

Werthers? 

[JTK]

Really? I did not have to read it... My most loved book by Goethe is "Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre", a real fat thing, 8 books, but I have to laugh several times reading it. But Goethe is not my favorite writer.