Back from a week in Linköping, Sweden, and my first impression is that everyone in the US is fat. Not much poetry there, at least not yet. Maybe after I get over jet lag.
I did read two verse novels on the plane: Glyn Maxwell's Time's Fool on the way there, and Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate on the way back. I'd read The Golden Gate before, but not at a single sitting. Reading them that way, just a week apart, was both humbling and inspiring, since I've been almost working on a long blank verse science fiction tale for about 20 years. Now I think rhyme might help me get going on it again. Seth's rhymes, in particular, are ingenious and at the same time sound natural; Maxwell's terza rima, even as loosely as he rhymes, provides part of the narrative drive of Time's Fool.
It's been too long to get back to the translation thing I feebly tried to start in June. My thanks to Kasey for his contribution and my apologies to everyone. Apologies as well to Jordan: I did reread William Carlos Williams, but found I had absolutely nothing to say about his work.
4:50:24 PM
|
|