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Sunday, November 24, 2002 |
The wonderful Arts & Letters Daily relays a piece from the free part of the Chronicle of Higher Education about Posidippus, who, despite having been dead for about 2300 years, has a new book out. Discovered in 1992 while unwrapping a mummy, it displaces Catullus's poems as the earliest surviving collection of poetry by a single author. Posidippus had previously been known (not by me) for his epigrams on drinking and sex; the newly discovered work has sections on many topics including precious stones, bird omens, and horse racing.
I can't read Greek either ancient or modern, and there's no mention of an available translation. But Catullus is available in many translations. My favorite is by Charles Martin, who also wrote a good critical introduction to Catullus and has a new book of poems out himself, Starting from Sleep: New and Selected Poems. Here are two of eight epigrams under the title "Past Closing Time":
II. From the Anthology
Theodorus will be tickled pink to hear
That I am dead: when Theodorus dies,
Someone, I'm sure, will learn of his demise
And a great grin will spread from ear to ear;
When he dies, yet another will be joyful:
If that's the case, then why is Death called "awful?"
III. Deconstructing the Zebra
"Watch out for flailing hooves," hyenas swarm,
Whose one rule is, "Dig in while it's still warm."
8:05:12 PM 
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Ruth Stone won this year's National Book Award for poetry. Here's the title poem from the book that won it:
In the Next Galaxy
Things will be different.
No one will lose their sight,
their hearing, their gallbladder.
It will be all Catskills with brand
new wrap-around verandas.
The idea of Hitler will not
have vibrated yet.
While back here,
they are still cleaning out
pockets of wrinkled
Nazis hiding in Argentina.
But in the next galaxy,
certain planets will have true
blue skies and drinking water.
I feel like I've been mean-spirited lately, probably because I've been away from my family for almost 3 weeks now, so I won't say anything about the poem.
7:10:50 PM
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
2006 Michael Snider.
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