Original Poem Research Articles

Generality of Creativity across Performance Domains: A Replication

A replication of a 1991 study in which Baer questioned the importance of general creativity-thinking skills was conducted using a larger sample with a broader range of abilities, as suggested in a 1994 published review by Kogan. 66 girls and 62 boys in Grade 8 wrote original poems and stories, which were later judged for creativity by experts. The correlation between these two measures of creativity was .19. This is similar to previous results.

Traductologie et poésie : Emily Dickinson entre la dérive des règles et les règles de la dérive

Traductology and Poetry : How to Address Emily Dickinson’s Rule-breaking Rules Poetry is a vantage point from which to probe the various parameters at stake in translation, particularly when poems are short and considered as part of a whole. If due regard is paid to what has been called in French the “significance” of the original poem, the new poem that emerges often appears as the upshot of a double awakening. On the one hand, the target tongue has opened up through awareness of its limits, and on the other, the source-poem has been born anew through re-activation of its “Still -Volcano-Life”. If there ever was a poet requiring a translation strategy, a sort of listening-in, Emily Dickinson is that one.

"This Book of Starres": Learning to Read George Herbert

Reviews James Boyd White, "This Book of Starres": Learning to Read George Herbert. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1994. 292 pp. $37.50 by W.A. Sessions The poem from which James Boyd White takes his title is about the proper reading of "Holy Scriptures." The ambiguities in Herbert's original poem point to the kind of dialectic that White would have readers of George Herbert learn: the incompleteness of "starres" as "poore books" can only be contrasted to what "lights" toward full meaning in "This book of starres." This dialectic obtains in White's own book in a method of analysis that combines two distinctly differing styles. The first is a rather old-fashioned New Critical reading and the second, a poststructuralist digressive selfconstruction . Such a self informs White's book and seeks a point of contact with the text itself as some sort of soteriological center. The first emphasis on close reading subsumes the Eliot thesis of tradition and talent and the Whiteheadian thesis of process: "The life of this poetry is not," White comments, "in poems as artifacts, but in the process of poetry-making that produced them, in the process of poetry-reading they require" (p. 150). This process excludes, fairly rigorously, any cultural engagement, although White does attempt some theological background early on, largely unfocused. What it does include is its firm dialectic of two selves, the reader's and the poet's, in that order and with a fluidity that extends to the poetry: "Herbert's conception of a person, then, is not as a single thing, but as a place of tension, conversation, conflict, and uncertainty — though here his parts are for the moment united in the poem itself" (p. 81). In fact, it is precisely in the text that person is revealed: "In reading Herbert's poems we are given a brokeness of language and self that in some way parallels his, which it is our task and opportunity to face," says White in the last line of his last chapter (p. 264). This self that is defining its multiple selves in reading Herbert's multiple selves (textualized into a book) is quite well-defined early on 56Book Reviews in White's argument. It is none other than a dramatized White, the product of a topology of region as well as mentality, and so throughout the book White takes his reader into other texts he knows, which for him form a contrast for his apprehension of Herbert. Ranging from the Iliad to Winnie-the-Pooh, such texts focus on three New England poets, particularly Emerson, Dickinson, and Frost. If frequently the extra-textual analyses do not help but interrupt, too cozily assuming a familiarity with the reader, at other times the insights are worth the breaks in the argument. Dickinson's movement from the spiritual to the physical landscape, the obverse of most contemporary poems and fiction, reveals a special technique of Herbert's seen all the more clearly for the comparison. If White's styles — close reading and poststructural solipsism — in combination are refreshing, there is some reason for caveat lector, at least for the omnivorous graduate student ready to "psyche" out the analysis and label it. White's mind is much too subtle for such labelling, and if repetitive or redundant in analysis, certainlyobviating any new ideological reading of Herbert, White's double style does keep the narrative of discovery going (unlike many other Renaissance critical texts). If few presses and few editors today allow such generous and lengthy readings as White's, the readings do provide what is rare in critical texts today. The reader sees text leading to text in a sequence that itself is salvific if followed, at the least therapeutic, because it evokes mystery and acceptance, as in "Love" (III). In short, Herbert reveals Herbert. In such a process, of course, it is a genuine question if such readings as White's add anything new or intend to. To the master Herbert studies from Tuve, Summers, and Stewart to Fish, Vendler, and Bloch, White adds few original readings. Similarly he offers little of the impact of new ideologies on Herbert texts, such as Schoenfeldt demonstrates...

The Therapeutic Potential of Synge’s Riders to the Sea

The essay describes an insight achieved, during the author’s own therapy, through her knowledge of Synge’s play (though the reading of the play was not a formal part of therapy). While her growing self-understanding helped her to better comprehend the play, the issues of the play; conversely, enriched her understanding of issues in her own and her mother’s life. As an addendum, the author includes an original poem which, she hopes, reveals some of what she has experienced in therapy—an event which has, from the start, helped to release her own “voice.”

Translating Poetic Forms

We live in an age that has begun congratulating itself on being a great age for translation. This self-congratulation is premature: we live, actually, in a time when Homer and Virgil are translated into prose. That is something the great Elizabethan translators never did: attend to the words of poems and not the forms. This discussion will be an attempt to inoculate the reader against this destructive and self-defeating practice. We may think we know what 'translating' means, but perhaps 'poetic form' is a bit mysterious to us. My favourite image for poetic form is the competitions of international gymnastics. There are three distinct competitions: the parallel bars, the vaulting-horse, and the free display on a large square of carpet. Now, the athletes who work on the parallel bars simply could not do those amazing and thrilling gyrations without the bars; the bars are like the poetic conventions: not a hindrance, but a necessity for producing that particular kind of athletic magic. The vaulting-horse gives us a different kind of aerial dance, which results from a run, a trajectory, and a landing. Substituting a net for the landing-mat would make the exercise quite different: different dangers, different limits; different limits, different content. We might think that the free display on a large square of carpet is a less formal matter: it might seem to offer as much 'freedom' as 'free verse'; but the carpet with its uncrossable edge is also a condition set by someone other than the gymnast: it forms a frame of a certain size that must be sensibly filled and made use of. Now, if we were to describe a gymnastic competition to somebody who had never seen one, the very first thing that we would have to do would be to explain these rules. We would not start with 'She did two somersaults and a side twist' unless the other person already understood the circumstances; if talking to a Martian on Mars, we would have to go still further and explain the strength of our earthly gravity. I believe, then, that translators are similarly bound to give some account and preferably inside the translation itself, not in a note of the limits and conventions chosen by the maker of the original poem. I shall never forget the shock

Writing women in Jacobean England

When was feminism born - in the 1960s or in the 1660s? For England, one might answer: the early decades of the 17th century. James I was King of England, and women were expected to be chaste, obedient, subordinate, and silent. Some, however, were not, and these are the women who interest Barbara Lewalski - those who, as queens and petitioners, patrons and historians and poets, took up the pen to challenge and subvert the repressive patriarchal ideology of Jacobean England. Setting out to show how these women wrote themselves into their culture, Lewalski rewrites Renaissance history to include some of its most compelling - and neglected - voices. As a culture dominated by a powerful Queen gave way to the rule of a partiarchal ideologue, a woman's subjection to father and husband came to symbolize the subjection of all English people to their monarch, and of all Christians to God. Remarkably enough, it is in this repressive Jacobean milieu that we first hear Englishwomen's own voices in some number, Elizabeth Cary, Aemilia Lanyer, Rachel Speght, and Mary Wroth published original poems, dramas, and prose of considerable scope and merit; others inscribed their thoughts and experiences in letters and memoirs. Queen Anne used the court masque to assert her place in palace politics, while Princess Elizabeth herself stood as a symbol of resistance to Jacobean patriarchy. By looking at these women through their works, Lewalski documents the flourishing of a sense of feminine identity and expression in spite of - or perhaps because of - the constraints of the time. The result is a fascinating sampling of Jacobean women's lives and works, restored to their rightful place in literary history and cultural politics. In these women's voices and perspectives, Lewalski identifies an early challenge to the dominant culture - and an ongoing challenge to our understanding of the Renaissance world.

The Sea of Life: a metaphorical vehicle for theory explication.

Metaphorical expression is viewed as a fundamental way of symbolizing used to develop nursing theory. The Sea of Life poem depicts a metaphor for explicating a theoretical structure derived from principles of the human becoming theory: Transforming occurs in the revealing-concealing of valuing. The Sea of Life, an original poem, sets forth the idea that unique meanings are co-created through human-environment relationships. The concepts of valuing, revealing-concealing, and transforming are linked through the poem to lived experiences. The easily recognizable concrete lived experiences which flow from the poem are re-conceptualized to formulate research questions.

A Committed, Passionate Voice

A Committed, Passionate Voice Peter F. Neumeyer (bio) Climb into the Bell Tower: Essays on Poetry, by Myra Cohn Livingston. New York: Harper & Row, 1990. The underlying questions of this volume are inescapable: What is children's poetry? Is it somehow different in kind from adult poetry? Do stanzas by Eleanor Farjeon, A. A. Milne, Aileen Fisher, and Elizabeth Madox Roberts represent a genre of their own and, basically, of a sort that no adult would pick up for solace, insight, or understanding? (Be honest when you answer that.) Or is children's poetry essentially no different from adult poetry? Is it simply that stratum of adult poetry which, at some level, a child can respond to—Dickinson's "I like to see it lap the miles," Tennyson's "Eagle," Langston Hughes's "Dreams"? Do Valerie Worth's or N. M. Bodecker's writings rank as good poetry by any criteria, or do we judge them more leniently because they're either written or marketed for a different audience? Do Ted Hughes's "My Sister Jane" or "My Uncle Dan" really rank with "Pike" or "View of a Pig"—or are they, as it were, written for the left hand? Even as I have taught graduate seminars in children's poetry, I was unsure of my answers to these questions. Sometimes, in my puzzlement, I turned to the writings of Myra Livingston, whose first book about children's poetry I reviewed almost twenty years ago. Reading Livingston on children's poetry, I am still not sure I always find the answers to my major questions, but I do know I am listening to the most knowledgeable, thoughtful, responsible voice—sometimes the most astringent voice—in America today on the subject. The voice is astringent because Livingston is committed and passionate about the seriousness of the subject of children and poetry, because when we give a child a book—she quotes George Steiner— we take in hand "the quick of another human being" (191). Myra Livingston is herself an esteemed poet ("children's poet," if such a thing there be), and by the time of this publication, she may have published her fiftieth book of or about poetry for and connected [End Page 174] with children. She is one of the two or three wisest and most industrious anthologizers of children's poetry (not a hack assembler but a master synthesizer). She is a thoughtful, subtle teacher and lecturer whose message is ever a balance of concern for poetry, poets, and children. And finally, as more than one significant contemporary poet can attest, Myra Livingston has been an invaluable sponsor and mentor of new poets. Livingston's collections of original poems range broadly from eclectic assemblings of "Worlds I Know" to thematic volumes on such subjects as trees and the seasons; frequently her books have been illustrated by our best artists, among them Leonard Everett Fisher, Antonio Frasconi, and Peter Sis. Her anthologies likewise range from the inclusive (Anthology of Children's Literature) to the topical ("poems of the unknowable"). Her The Child as Poet: Myth or Reality is an important book for parents, teachers, and all others who think about poetry and children-an examination of the poetic imagination, a scrupulous study of acclaimed (or, "notorious") "child poets," as well as a plea for common sense and honest appraisal, a valiant barricade against mindless mediocrity, and a tonic for the cheap and condescending sentimentality that is such a danger to those who, with good intentions, attempt to foster "creativity" in children with the poetical equivalent of coloring books. Myra Livingston is a necessary voice from outside the academy and its often institutionalized opinions. At the same time, academics trust her because she is subtle, serious, passionate, and fully professional as a poet-scholar. While some write single-mindedly about the craft of poetry and others write fondly of children, Livingston is knowledgeable about and dedicated to the tradition and art of poetry at the same time that she cherishes no romantic illusions about "genius" children. For these reasons I have kept Livingston's widely scattered essays permanently on reserve for my students. You may imagine, then, what a godsend it...

The Social Origins of Egyptian Expansionism during the Muhammad Ali Period

List of Illustrations Preface Introduction Medieval Notions of Color Color in Daily Life Beautiful Colors for Mere Enjoyment? The Most Beautiful Colors Adorn the Woman The Devil's Pernicious Palette The Dangers of Yellow, Red, Green, and Blue The Progress of Decoloration Appendix of Original Poems Sources Index

Musicians wrestle everywhere: Emily Dickinson & music

Emily Dickinson's astonishingly original poems, with their keen imagery and highly charged but economically expressed emotion, have inspired numerous composers to set them to music. This book provides a detailed inventory of 1,615 musical settings of Emily Dickinson's texts, by 276 composers, written between 1896 and 1991.

The Problem of Dryden's Fables

THE MEANDERING TITLE of John Dryden's Fables Ancient and Modem Translated into Versefrom Homer, Ovid, Boccace, and Chaucer with Original Poems reflects the difficulty of formulating even the simplest general statement about the nature of the work. It is not a collection of translations, for it contains original poems; it is not a collection of stories, for much of it is not narrative. Even its fables vary widely in genre and tone -The Cock and the Fox is witty and ironic, Palamon and Arcite is epic, Ceyx and Alcyone tragic, The Flower and the Leaf' didactic. At every turn the collection defeats our efforts to generalize. Nonetheless, a number of recent critics claim to have found system underlying this apparent randomness: Fables provides a complex Christian humanist response to the doubts and conflicts that trouble human experience; or a progression from secular to spiritual, from pagan to Christian ideals; or an equilibrium produced by balanced instances of piety and passion; or a system of self-contradiction that advances subversion as a final value.' These critics dismiss the obvious variety of the collection as a mere surface effect which, once they have conceded its presence, they may safely ignore. No satisfactory account of Fables can, however, afford to deal so lightly with this issue: if we wish to claim that Dryden wrote to construct some unified system, we must first explain why he should have assembled for that purpose so

Complete poems: pt. 1: Original poems, 1926-1934; pt.2 : Original poems, 1937-1955 and poetry translations

Complete poems: pt. 1: Original poems, 1926-1934; pt.2 : Original poems, 1937-1955 and poetry translations

Gender at Work: Four Women Writers of the Eighteenth Century ed. by Ann Messenger

Ann Messenger, ed., Gender at Work: Four Women Writers of the Eight­ eenth Century (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1990). 163. $29.95 U.S. Gender at Work is not so much a collection of essays as it is that quintessentially feminist form, a group project. Its four participants, each connected in some way with Simon Fraser University, set out to do two things: to restore to light four neglected women writers and to contribute to the cur­ rent debate on gender and discourse. This debate Ann Messenger, in her “Introduction,” summarizes in two questions: do the different genders write differently, and how does gender manifest itself in literature? The writers assume that the goal of revival will be accomplished in the course of their four essays. Their second goal they aim to attain through two approaches: by testing women’s writing against that of men, and by practical criticism of individual women writers. The subjects have been chosen not to be rep­ resentative of eighteenth-century women writers, but to represent a variety of genres and class origins. We are also told in the Introduction that each of the four essays will produce a positive result: gender does make a difference. The first essay is Messenger’s own, a comparison between the work of William Shenstone and his protegee, the young pastoral poet Mary Whateley (later Darwall) (1738-1825), whose Original Poems on Several Occa­ sions (1764) appeared in the same year as Shenstone’s Works in Verse and Prose. Messenger begins with a demonstration of the many similarities in background between Shenstone and Whateley that, almost scientifically, en­ able a valid comparison of their work. The only significant differences she finds are age (Shenstone was twenty-four years older), gender, and temper­ ament. On the last point, I personally found myself wondering whether an eighteenth-century middle-class woman’s six children are not evidence more of her fertility and good relations with her husband than of her “energetic” temperament. The comparison on which Messenger then embarks between the work of the two poets is fascinating, but very brief. The most interesting and convincing comparisons reveal Whateley’s modest sense of the purpose of poetry and of herself as a poet, and her innovative use of the genres of imitation and pastoral elegy. Although Messenger refers both to her own previously published work on Whateley and to her forthcoming biography, I would have enjoyed much more extensive discussion of Whateley’s poetry in this place. Messenger also could have discussed much more fully her intriguing claim that Whateley’s second book of verse, as Mrs. Darwall in 1794, reveals the significant influence of her changed marital status. 367 I came away from Messenger’s essay wanting very much to be as convinced by her claim that Mary Whateley Darwall was a better poet than William Shenstone, as I was that Whateley DarwalPs gender made a significant dif­ ference, but I was unable to confirm myself in this belief. Messenger rightly states in her “Introduction” that the goal of restoring to light the work of “unjustly neglected women writers . . . needs no explanation or justification” ; however, a revival of interest must be accompanied by making the work of these women available to readers. Only four of Mary Whateley Darwall’s poems have, to my knowledge, been anthologized, and her work is available at only a handful of North American libraries. Surely the republication of Whateley Darwall’s work is at least as necessary as Messenger’s forthcoming biography. She might consider adding at least a section of complete poems to that work. Unfortunately, the general unpopularity of pastoral poetry in the twentieth century would probably be a considerable stumbling block to the reappearance in print of the works of this deserving poet. Fortunately, availability is not a significant issue for the three other women writers ex­ amined in Gender at Work, the poet Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea (1661-1720), the playwright Mary Pix (1666-1709), and the autobiographer Laetitia Pilkington (1712-50). I was, at first, somewhat wary of the three exercises in practical criticism, not because of the choice of subjects, but because of the qualifications of the...

Indeterminacy in Byron

INDETERM INACY IN BYRON MERVYN NICHOLSON Cariboo College “The object is an abstraction of a relatively invariant form. An object is more like a pattern of movement than like a solid separate thing that exists autonomously and permanently.” (Physicist David Bohm, Whole­ ness and the Implicate Order) “The trace »s nothing, it is not an entity, it exceeds the question, What is? and contingently makes it possible.” (Derrida, Of Grammatology) A. key insight of recent theory is that what isn’t there is as important as what is there: the missing, so to speak, has arrived. Indeed, the image of the missing space and its paradigmatic function deserve scrutiny as objects of literary analysis themselves. The fascination with emptiness, with “the gaps which texts reveal” (Cohen 382) constitutes a paradigm found everywhere: in Todorov’s “hesitancy” ; in de Man’s “aporia” ; in Derrida’s “trace,” the negation of “presence,” the deferral of meaning; in the typifying argument of Foucault that the missing reveals more than the explicit; in feminist criticism’s “silences,” marking the repression of women; in analysis of the fantastic and Gothic as a repression of the irrational and the excluded; in Marxist analysis of discourse as what Jameson calls a “prison-house” to deny exploitation. Byron is especially relevant here, because he conspicuously uses missing spaces in his writing. Indeed, omitting things defines Byron textually — and biographically. One notes that his memoirs are missing — the memoirs of a poet everyone views as essentially autobiographical. It is a manysided irony that friends should deliberately destroy his apologia — written specifically to vindicate himself— in order to save his reputation.1 How Byron justified himself to a judgmental world constitutes crucial information about him. We have an image — but Byron himself we do not know. The first of his “Detached Thoughts” is a peculiar speculation on iden­ tity. He ponders all the figures the public (in five languages) have compared him to: Rousseau, Aretino, Napoleon, Timon of Athens, Shakespeare, Sa­ tan, Goethe, “the Phantasmagoria,” Henry the Eighth, Michelangelo, Lara, Mirabeau, Raphael, Diogenes, Childe Harold, Lara, the Count in Beppo, Pope, Milton, Dryden, Burns, Chatterton, Kean, Alfieri — not to mention E n g l i s h S t u d i e s i n C a n a d a , x v i , l, March 1 9 9 0 “An alabaster Vase lighted up within” (BLJ 9:38). Existential/biographical and fictional/textual rub shoulders as equals in this (incomplete) list. By­ ron concludes that he does not know who he is. One “Detached Thought” says “I have written my Memoirs, but omitted all the really consequential and important parts.” The secrets would “paralyze posterity” (BLJ 9:38). And thus the essential point of his (auto)biography is omitted. (Almost cer­ tainly one missing piece is that Byron was bisexual, a fact with disastrous implications, gay sex being a hanging crime [see Crompton].) More subtly, he implies that identity itself is inherently a mystery, cannot be a coherent unit or even self-explanatory. It is, finally, an unknowable; what must be left out is the determining part. The mystery of identity, a key motif in Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature as well as in Godwin and Shelley, is also profoundly Byronic. For Byron, identity is self-creation, not a knowable quantum: there is, by definition, a gap in identity — not merely by accident. Byron did not need Lacan to explain to him (or fail to explain) that identity is not a monolithic unit. Byronic identity is a complex process of self-creation: hence a time-energy, not a completed object. Moreover, one is as much a function of society as individual property. In Bloomian terms, Byron was a “strong” poet of unexampled daring, flatly stating he writes what he pleases. Don Juan may well be, as Auden said, “the most original poem in English” — the most important poem, says Jerome McGann, published between Paradise Lost and The Prelude. Byron is unlike any writer in history. He was rich, famous — and bitterly envied. In a society dedicated to aristocratic privilege, he was a titled lord. He had undeniable charisma and sexual magnetism — and plenty of opportunities to discharge that...

Christopher Smart's Proposals for A Collection of Original Poems

Christopher Smart's Proposals for A Collection of Original Poems

The Cult of True Womanhood: Toward a Womanist Attitude in African-American Theatre

Those are lyrics from an old Ink Spots song that my mother sang to me. Today around the schools, they speak of cultural transmission. Back then, before I went to school, we called it 'Grandma say.' Dr. Eleanor Traylor wrote those words in her wonderful essay on Toni Morrison's Tar Baby. In the essay Dr. Traylor talks about something that has always been central to my work as an adaptor/director. That something is folklore. She ends her essay with this original poem:

Letters to the Editor

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Dear Sir: I want you to know how much I enjoy each issue ofPerspectives in Biology and Medicine and how intrigued I was with the article entitled "Parasite Eccentricities " by Jerry Y. Niederkorn in the Autumn issue. There is one slight correction I have of Dr. Niederkorn's article, however. He refers to Robert Hegner, who, in his book, Big Fleas Have Little Fleas, has a poem regarding this phenomenon. Big fleas have little fleas upon.their backs to bite 'em. And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so, Ad Infinitum. I should like to refer to the original poem by Jonathan Swift (1667-1745), which I believe was plagiarized by Mr. Hegner. So, naturalists observe, a flea Hath smaller fleas that on him prey; And these have smaller still to bite 'em; And so proceed ad infinitum. Thus every poet, in his kind Is bit by him that comes behind. Perhaps Swift was anticipating Mr. Hegner's bite when he composed this verse! s.v. Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 13th ed., p. 296. Stewart F. Taylor 108 East Cook Street Portage, Wisconsin 53901 Permission to reprint a letter printed in this section may be obtained only from the author. Perspectives in Biology and Mediane, 30, 4 ¦ Summer 1987 \ 61 1 Dear Sir: I am pleased to learn of Dr. Stewart F. Taylor's letter addressing the origin of die quote in my recent article in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. This is an interesting bit of detective work on Dr. Taylor's part, and I welcome his setting die record straight on behalf ofJonathan Swift. Jerry Y. Niederkorn Department of Ophthalmology University of Texas Health Science Center Dallas, Texas 75235 612 I Letters to the Editor POEMS FROM A DIALOGUE ON EVOLUTION HISTORY IN THE EARTH Time toys with the old deaths spider prisoned in amber worms cast from their burrows stone in bone. Tracks and traces of relics —snail, pterodactyl and fern— push their way to discovery whirl in space with us. On my knees to read the stories told in the layered rock I am amazed at the arrogance of protoplasm, stuff of life that copied itself in many forms as it swarmed over sea, land and ice dirough millions of years after the first quivering cell. PIONEERS When lone cells broke from the primeval slime to link together through ensuing time, they shaped the wall of tiny Volvox sphere then swept it through a pond, to browse or veer. Sea flowers reproduced themselves with verve complete with proto-muscle, hint of nerve, and coral polyps built their bony home through shallow waters to a swirl of foam. The worker ants attended heavy queens, their shining young, and soldiers like machines. Alert in grass, lions crept side by side, maneuvering upwind to feed their pride. So to this day—at random or for need— experiments in community proceed. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 30, 4 ¦ Summer 1987 \ 613 FOR A DEVONIAN Come from pools of dwindling deep, slither through turbid waters Leave the shadowy caves of sleep Breach the shoreline, toddle and creep on belly and tail and fins that falter Come from pools of dwindling deep Breathe cliffs of air, jagged and steep, until the hurt no longer matters Leave the shadowy caves of sleep Feed in the shallows, brood to keep filling the ranks of sons and daughters Come from pools of dwindling deep Take the wearisome fervid leap along the way to mammoths and otters Leave the shadowy caves of sleep Nothing to cherish, nothing to weep, eons before the saints and martyrs Come from pools of dwindling deep Leave the shadowy caves of sleep AT NIGHT IN THE CAVE Around her the sleeping others, old woman awake by the fire fails to hear sharp yelps of the drowsing dogs. She considers tomorrow when she will no longer drag wood bend twigs for snares or sew the clumsy leather— and none will bring sweet suet to ease her bones. 614 I Miscellany Above her a hand of hovering shadows engraves her face, at the hearth, caverns in ruins build and burn, embers edged in flame tumble in a heap and...

Pound's Propertius, Again

There is more than a little danger in too-often reading a poem in the same light, in always approaching by the easy and familiar path. No exception is Pound's Homage To Sextus Propertius, which from the date of its publication to virtually the present moment has excited lively and amusing controversy centering primarily on its qualities and integrity qua translation. At times, the debate has reached such a pitch that intelligent and decorous analysis has given way to (literary-) critical sniping, name-calling and the like. This is good; poetry ought to affect people in the visceral ways Pound's translation has. But the issue, in the terms hitherto suggested, is probably irresolvable. In essence, Pound has written a poem that in obvious ways depends upon and translates selected portions of the Propertian corpus, even while altering some of that Propertius beyond all recognition. What does one call this? To call it translation is to invite criticism on grounds of inaccuracy. Plenty of that. To think it no translation at all, but strictly an original poem, as Donald Davie has done, is manifestly implausible: one simply can't wish the Latin poem away.1 To take the middle road as J. P. Sullivan has done, and call it creative translation along lines dictated by Johnson and Fitzgerald, invites criticism from both extremes, particularly in its logically necessary attempts to elevate plain errors (as they appear to the ordinary eye) into patterns of calculated ironic distortion.2 These are the themes of the Homage criticism to date, and they and their variations are no doubt destined to a long half-life.3 For the single indisputable fact is that the poem is stubbornly there

Voices of the Young

Published with the author's permission with an endorsement of her father, who is himself a writer and teacher. No changes have been made in the original poem, which Stephanie wrote in 1984 at the a...

Horace and Hopkins: The Point of Balance in Odes 3.1

In May of 1868, less than two years after Gerard Manley Hopkins left the English Church to become a Roman Catholic and after eight months spent teaching at Newman's Oratory School in Birmingham, the classical scholar burned nearly all of his poetry; he called the act ‘the sacrifice of my innocents’. Austin Warren describes Hopkins as feeling caught through his life between conflicting desires to be a pdet and to be a saint. This strain and the anxieties it produced appear in his later poems, such as ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’ and ‘Heaven Haven’, and in his journals and letters. In the latter he describes the emotional effect he wanted poems to have upon readers: some poems must, Hopkins asserted, ‘explode’ within the reader. Intensifying the psychological reaction of the readers of literature was one of Hopkins's aims when he created poetry, just as it was a goal when he wrote redactions of the speeches in Shakespeare's tragedies or when he chose from among variant readings for Greek drama. In September 1868, when he entered the priesthood as a Jesuit, Hopkins began a new life of personal intensity and, perhaps to his own surprise, a second poetic career. But a number of poems survived the destruction. One is his translation of Horace's Odes 3.1, the longer of the only two extant translations of complete Latin poems. As with A. E. Housman's sole surviving translation of a Latin ode, Horace's 4.7, this one reveals a profound identification with Horace, a subtle understanding of the original poem, and an intense revelation of the mind of the English writer during the period of translating. The emotional intensity, technical virtuosity and psychological richness of the translation make Hopkins's version of 3.1 a significant poem for scholars of English and classical poetry.