#decadant poetry

[dearorpheus]

"In ways that are often hard to articulate but run through everything, my work has been deeply informed by my own experiences. I have been reading Homer throughout my adult life. Whenever I hear blustering winds and rain-storms, surging rivers or choppy seas, when I watch a flock of geese or a swooping hawk, when I walk through rustling woods or up a mountainside, I know I am inside the world of Homeric similes. Even the most trivial moments of daily life remind me of Homer. I notice that my feet are not "well-oiled" whenever I tie my sandals on. I cannot watch my dog happily rolling in mulch without thinking of Achilles, prostrated in grief and tossing around in the dust. More seriously, the poem gives me a language to understand my deepest emotions and those of people around me. When I weep for my mother, who died recently in a distant land, I remember the grief of Achilles and of Priam. The Iliad is with me always."

— Emily Wilson, in the translator's note of her Iliad

#'Calliope the Muse of heroic poetry probably has better things to do than help a mere translator. #Nevertheless I have prayed for her aid daily for over a decade as I worked to create these two translations of the Homeric epics. #Now that the task is done I lay my words at the feet of the goddess.' #homer #my upload

[apoemaday]

A Decade

by Amy Lowell

When you came, you were like red wine and honey, And the taste of you burnt my mouth with its sweetness Now you are like morning bread, Smooth and pleasant. I hardly taste you at all for I know your savour, But I am completely nourished.

#poetry #amy lowell #a decade

[letterful]

— ANNA KAMIEŃSKA, trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanisław Barańczak.

#* #from 'Polish Poetry of the Last Two Decades of Communist Rule: Spoiling Cannibals' Fun' :-) #aka one of my favourite anthologies of polish poetry in translation!

[blacknarcissus]

Orphée (1950)

#orpheus #orphée #jean cocteau #jean marais #poetry #quotes #surrealism #surréalisme #classic film #old hollywood #french cinema #cinéma français #1950s films #decade: 1950s #1950s

[metamorphesque]

The New Decade, Hieu Minh Nguyen

#hieu minh nguyen #the new decade #poetry #poems #quotes #literature

[hedgehog-moss]

[1] `there are often translations available in other languages long before English ones` This is really interesting! I'm familiar with translation in games, where english is often a very early target (a small game might get 0-5 translations, depending on amount of text) because the size of the market is larger.

[2] Do you happen to know why this is different for books? Is it faster to come to a deal about publication rights for some other languages to get started on the translation? Is translation to english harder (at least from French) than to say, Spanish?

The literary translation situation has long been very dismal in the English-speaking world! I don’t know a lot about video games, but are localisations provided by the company that makes the game? Because if that's the case it makes sense that games would get translated into English as a priority. For literary translations which are imported rather than exported, other countries have to decide to translate a foreign author and anglo countries (US, UK and Canada at least) are not very interested in foreign literature. There's something known as the "3% rule" in translation—i.e. about 3% of all published books in the US in any given year are translations. Some recent sources say this figure is outdated and it’s now something like 5% (... god) but note that it encompasses all translations, and most of it is technical translation (instruction manuals, etc). The percentage of novels in translation published in the UK is 5-6% from what I’ve read and it’s lower in the US. In France it's 33%, and that’s not unusually high compared to other European countries.

I don't think it's only because of the global influence of English* and the higher proportion of English speakers in other countries than [insert language] speakers in the US, or poor language education in schools etc, because just consider how many people in the US speak Spanish—I just looked it up and native Spanish speakers in the US represent nearly 2/3rds of the population of France, and yet in 2014 (most recent solid stat I could find) the US published only 67 books translated from Spanish. France with a much smaller % of native Spanish speakers (and literary market) published ~370 translations from Spanish that same year. All languages combined, the total number of new translations published in France in 2014 was 11,859; in Spain it was 19,865; the same year the US published 618 new translations. France translated more books from German alone (754) than the US did from all languages combined, and German is only our 3rd most translated language (and a distant third at that!). The number of new translations I found in the US in 2018 was 632 so the 3% figure is probably still accurate enough.

* When I say it’s not just about the global influence of English—obviously that plays a huge role but I mean there’s also a factor of cultural isolationism at play. If you take English out of the equation there’s still a lot more cultural exchange (in terms of literature) between other countries. Take Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead; it was published in 2009, and (to give a few examples) translated in Swedish 1 year later, in Russian & German 2 years later, in French, Danish & Italian 3 years later, in English 10 years later—only after she won the Nobel. I’m reminded of the former secretary for the Nobel Prize who said Americans “don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature” because they don’t translate enough. I think it's a similar phenomenon as the one described in the "How US culture ate the world" article; the US is more interested in exporting its culture than in importing cultural products from the rest of the world. And sure, anglo culture is spread over most continents so there’s still a diversity of voices that write in English (from India, South Africa, etc etc) but that creates pressure for authors to adopt English as their literary language. The dearth of English translation doesn’t just mean that monolingual anglophones are cut off from a lot of great literature, but also that authors who write in minority languages are cut off from the global visibility an English translation could give them, as it could serve as a bridge to be translated in a lot more languages, and as a way to become eligible for major literary prizes including the Nobel.

Considering that women are less translated than men and represent a minority (about 1/3) of that already abysmally low 3% figure, I find the recent successes of English translations of women writers encouraging—Olga Tokarczuk, Banana Yoshimoto, Han Kang, Valeria Luiselli, Samanta Schweblin, Sayaka Murata, Leila Slimani, of course Elena Ferrante... Hopefully this is a trend that continues & increases! I remember this New Yorker article from years ago, “Do You Have to Win the Nobel Prize to Be Translated?”, in which a US small press owner said “there’s just no demand in this country” (for translated works); but the article acknowledged that it’s also a chicken-and-egg problem. Traditional publishers who have the budget to market them properly don’t release many translations as (among other things) they think US readers are reluctant to read translated foreign literature, and the indie presses who release the lion’s share of translated works (I read it was about 80%) don’t have the budget to promote them so people don’t buy them so the assumption that readers aren’t interested lives on. So maybe social media can slowly change the situation by showing that anglo readers are interested in translated books if they just get to find out about them...

#ask #anyway it's difficult to find accurate stats for translation and compare between countries because some % you see are #for all translations and as i said technical translations / computer manuals etc make up the bulk of it #some % are averages over decades; others only for fiction or for novels & poetry etc so you end up comparing apples and oranges #but the fact remains that the three percent website (translation database) was able to list every single literary translation #published in the us year after year and it was never higher than 600-ish titles in the 2010s. it's not great #when you see much smaller countries release translations in the thousands or tens of thousands #it's also not a huge improvement over the 400-ish yearly US translations in the 00s #but they haven't released numbers for the past few years and maybe the situation is a bit better now

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

From The Air • Big Science • Sweaters • Walking & Falling • Born, Never Asked • O Superman • Example #22 • Let X=X / It Tango

Spotify ♪ Bandcamp ♪ YouTube

#hyltta-polls #polls #artist: laurie anderson #language: english #decade: 1980s #Art Pop #Experimental #Electronic #Spoken Word #Minimal Synth #Post-Minimalism #Poetry #Surreal

[finelythreadedsky]

 On one level the book is about the life of a woman who is hardly more than a token in a great epic poem, on another it’s about how history and context shape how we are seen, and the brief moment there is to act between the inescapable past and the unknowable future. Perhaps to write Lavinia Le Guin had to live long enough to see her own early books read in a different context from the one where they were written, and to think about what that means.

-Jo Walton

#thinking of how her last four novels between 2004 and 2008 show a progressive blossoming of interest in classical literary traditions #following nearly half a century's worth of a career where she seems to actively avoid the influence of classical or medieval europe #idk. but i think this explains annals of the western shore as much as lavinia. #she gets so interested in what it means to share the same stories across space and time (and class and gender and nationality) #to be united in a community by having the same poetry #and in such an obvious way thinking about classics as a discipline is an incredible way to work through that #and i do think its an interest that must come out of having witnessed her own work unite people in community across time #if you're talking about the way stories and poems bring people together across time... #i read the texts passed on to me by renaissance humanists and 19th century philologists and byzantine monks and late antique scribes... #and they're the same across time and space but they're also not #and to have seen her own work reach people across space and time and be the same but also not... that must have been incredible #so: did living long enough to see her own early books read in a different context and to think about what that means #drive her to think about classical literature as she clearly was for the better part of a decade? #mine #reception #anyway i gotta think about this and email [redacted] tomorrow

[sivavakkiyar]

AK Ramanujan

#posted this a decade ago but typed it up so it’s broken #ak ramanujan #south asian literature #Tamil #poetry

[lesangsaint]

the last motel before a decade's long purgatory, Silas Denver Melvin

#silas denver melvin #the last motel before a decade’s long purgatory #romantic horror #love as violence #romanticism #romance #dark romanticism #romantic academia #dark academia #dark academism #darkest academia #dark academia poem #dark academia poetry #dark acadamia quotes #gothic academia #chaotic academia #poetry #poem #love poem #on love #writers and poets

[jjcattt]

hey will wood fans how we doin

#will wood has written some of the most beautiful poetry of both this decade and the last and yet he's not topping the charts????? a crime. #will wood #ww #wwatt #will wood and the tapeworms #in case i make it #icimi #in case i die #icid #round mesh's cherub (aching humans? aching humans!) #hey i did that

[diana-andraste]

Illustrations from Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal, Georges Rouault, c. 1937

And yet to wine, to opium even, I prefer the elixir of your lips on which love flaunts itself; and in the wasteland of desire your eyes afford the wells to slake my thirst.

Charles Baudelaire, Sed non Satiata (Unslakeable Lust) trans. Richard Howard

#art #georges rouault #rouault #1930s #baudelaire #charles baudelaire #poetry #illustration #les fleurs du mal #sed non satiata #richard howard #decadent movement #the flowers of evil #etching #aquatint

[lis4ux]

Poetry Challenge. Called out by @obxismyhome @jjxkiaraxpopexcleoxjohnbxsarah

Kook Year

The hammock is swaying

My lips are praying

That you’ll be around today

Cause the moment you left me

I knew I never would be

How I was before

You’re in all the moments and memories

I carry them with me

Cause I can’t accept you’re gone

I feel your ghost in the rain

Waiting for you to break through the day

Like you always did before

And if I get one wish

It’s just that you’d know this

That I’ll always be here

#kookyear #jj maybank #jiara #kiara carrera #poetry #challenge #best friends to lovers #have not written poetry in over a decade #this was such a creative exercise I love it #sing it #pining for the girl

[blackjack-15]

Hi I just got through reading all of your liveblogging posts about The Bear! It was a delight to read all of your real-time predictions that ended up coming true, you really had this show’s number from the jump lol. Do you have any predictions for next season? Most fans think Carm and Syd are headed for an explosive confrontation, but are any other storylines, scenes, character beats, etc. that you think we might see?

This is super nice of you, anon! thank you so much for following my chaotic ramblings XD and hey it's a lot easier to know what might happen in the show when they've got such competent writers/directors! tho they surprised me a fair number of times (i don't think i'll be over the interplay/intercuts of claire, carmy, and syd at the end of 2X07/start of 2X08 any time soon), which keeps things fun

as far as predictions for next season...i think it's hard to say without having the first five minutes of S3 in front of me (they do such a good job setting up the tone and conflicts of the season in the first little bit of S1 and S2!), but i've got

a couple things i'm pretty sure about:

-more REM songs (only thing i'm 100% positive on)

-more kitchen/cooking time for our mains, especially carmy. last season's renovations + cliche john hughes nonsense kept him mostly out of the kitchen from ep 3 on, and i'm 99% sure he'll be back with a knife in hand come S3

-nat giving birth to a girl (i'd love it but am not solid on predicting she'd be named some derivative of 'mary' (or a name meaning 'victory', such as nicole), given the berzatto family prayer).

i know the temptation for her to have a boy named after michael is strong b/c it's TV, but this series (rightly, in my mind) tends away from Lionizing the Dead simply b/c they're dead, and after spending S2 breaking down mikey (and showing mikey and nat's relationship, which like ever berzatto relationship wasn't super healthy), i'm hopeful and trusting the writers to avoid this. it wouldn't make me hate the show or anything, but it would honestly disappoint me unless done in a way (i honestly can't think of what way) that would make it okay. plus pete kinda screams girldad to me, and seeing carmy and richie with a little niece would be incredibly precious

-sydcarmy dustup of some kind, but i doubt it'll be as explosive as we've seen in the past, mostly b/c syd was stressed but exhilarated by success at friends & family and b/c i think carmy's (lack of) mental health will be brought up in relation to it

-solidifying of a secondary staff at the bear to let our regulars breathe a bit and have the bear feel like a real, functioning kitchen, not a mom and pop greasy spoon -- this started at the end of s2 but it needs to continue

-cicero setting the tone of the first few months of The Bear (and probably his commentary on carmy's relationships) -- we're not out of the realm of Complete and Utter Failure yet, lads, and the money is gonna come due -- whether by the guise of Friendly Uncle Jimmy visiting with Nat, or the mask of Cicero the Loan Shark coming out in full force

-art storyline with carmy figuring out what will replace the awful painting (i'm going to guess it'll be something of his design, but it'll at least be something he feels represents him, given the comments last season)

-major theme of carmy figuring out what he wants vs what others want for him. him analyzing his relationship with claire by himself -- or, my preference, talking it out with Tina, who he seems to be able to open up to pretty well -- is part of this

things that have to happen but i have no idea how/to what resolution:

-carmy and richie addressing the "donna" fight/comment. it's gonna be multi-ep (neither one is great at complimenting the other to their face and tend to do it behind the other's back, but richie is especially bad at it), and it's gonna hurt.

-pete spilling the beans to Someone (not nat but not sure who) about donna being at f&f

-resident claire's poor little hurt feelings from trespassing into the kitchen and eavesdropping on then leaving carmy in the middle of a really, really bad attack (yes i'm phrasing it that way because it's true <3)

-something about tiff's upcoming wedding (marcus getting contracted/recommended to make dessert for it would be painful but oh so crunchy)

-carmy meets syd's dad. he's proud of her and her success and you know he's gonna want to meet her business partner

nebulous predictions:

-ebra's storyline with him carving out a niche at the sandwich window getting screentime

-tina coming more into her own and maybe getting a designated storyline (about what? no idea)

-more gary nonsense. man lives the wildest life and we see almost none of it

-carmy working through what cooking means to him and what it means in relation to the bear/the berzattos/sydney

-nat's water breaks/she goes into labor at the bear. not sure the baby will actually be born there (i'd guess probably not on the whole), but the process will Begin there

-syd distraction/love interest storyline. not even her dating particularly, just her attention being Split and having the shoe be on the other foot for carmy as they navigate what being business partners means outside the kitchen

-fak time. he's a little uncertain, a little wandering in the restaurant, and he was a major...antagonistic force, let's say? in S2. his place in the world of the bear needs clarification and harmony, and his identity needs solidity and sureness

things that aren't impossible/improbable but would be a Little Treat for Me specifically:

-chef jess being invited to the bear by richie (let the man have people outside the bear and his kid/ex! garrett may come too i'll allow it)

-the return of louie my beloved (helping out at the sandwich window? he makes a good foil to Young Carmy, so i would like to see him more -- carmy in Full Mentorship would be a thing to see, and it would be a being-better-than-mikey-was-to-him thing as well. it's narratively crunchy and provides lots of room for growth, but can be done in ways that don't involve louie, so that's why it's here)

-syd's best meal + comment about being a regular at The Beef coming back. do i think they eventually will? yes. am i aware that my desire for them is prolly stronger than it narratively should be be predicted? also yes. could this easily be combined with carmy meeting syd's dad? yes and i will break the sound barrier

-carmy drawing a dish syd comes up with. a hand-drawn menu for the bear would be Incredible, and syd's face looking at a sistine-chapel-style drawing of a dish she came up with? tremendous, chef

thing that i want to be brought up more than Anything but don't predict it'll be touched (at least directly):

-carmy yelling for syd during his attack in the walk-in (i'm sorry you can't have the man yelling "MARCUS GET ME SYD. GET ME SYD" and expect me not to want it on a billboard

that got long, sorry anon, but there we go -- 4am rambling off-the-cuff about S3...only months to go, hopefully....

#the bear #anti claire bear #asked and answered #sorry this is like a novella but i can't keep my mouth shut! y'all know how it goes #syd x carmy #i refer to her as 'resident claire' because 1) no surname and 2) referring to her place in the bear universe as a Type rather than a person #she's not claire a fleshed out character; she's the resident claire; the archetype that is a vehicle for conflict + growth #also because i am as catty as the day is long and i can be! been in fandom too many decades not to call it as i see it #that and it's her job title so like it works but it works in so many different ways #it's like poetry it rhymes dot jpeg #i might be way off base but i'm p sure i'm at least on the field

[quiteexoteric]

Day 1- Rebellion!

ran out of time to finish the smash part(and background and foreground and body) of this poetry smash week inspired one but fuck you im tagging it as such anyhow. It’s the intent that matters, right?

Just imagine something horrifyingly sad with the death of bahorel behind the scenes here.

#i have a bit of an obsession with making my canon era les mis guys as historically accurate as possible #(could go on about jehans waistcoat for hours) #so it pains me to say his hair is not even remotely based in reality #but if anyone could transcend time by a decade to have the young charles dickens hair it would be prouvaire #les mis #les miserables #poetrysmashweek #poetry smash #jehan #jehan prouvaire #jean prouvaire #tw death #tw blood #PoetrySmashWeek 2022 #my art

[yieldingtides]

Poetry in action. 2hr sketch drawing.

#reverse 1999 #reverse 1999 zima #copic markers #ink drawing #reverse 1999 Зима #poetry lines are Robert Frost's The Road Not Taken. Made an impression on my brain after a decade...