Poetic Talent Research Articles

From the Yukon to Hell: The War Rhymes of Robert Service

The Northern Review 44 (2017): 243–265 The Scottish poet Robert Service has often been described as a mere rhymester, noted, if at all, for his Yukon ballads. This article argues that he was a highly talented folk poet whose best work was written as a result of his experiences in the First World War. His ideas of social Darwinism, so obvious in the brilliant Yukon poems, were transferred to the horror of warfare after he quit the Dawson for good in 1912. He first worked as a war correspondent sending reports, at least one of which was duplicated in the Dawson Daily News, to the Toronto Star. Images that first appeared in his journalism were re-used for his poems. He then joined the American Ambulance Unit to gain some further knowledge of the action, encounters that inspired his Rhymes of A Red Cross Man, a bestseller that represents some of his very finest work. He was highly successful in capturing the thoughts, fears, and heroism of soldiers who confronted at first hand the bloody filth and fatuity of trench warfare. He conjured images of death and dying that have now almost become cliches. He was anti-war but he had endless sympathy for the humble men who found themselves with commissions to kill or be killed. It is noteworthy that he did not forget the plight of the women who were condemned to remain in ignorance of their loved ones or, worse, to the prospect of lengthy widowhoods. It is time to recognize his achievement. This article is part of a special collection of papers originally presented at a conference on “The North and the First World War,” held May 2016 in Whitehorse, Yukon. https://doi.org/10.22584/nr44.2017.011

«COMPASS TORE AROUND - PEOPLE WENT WILD»

[For the English abstract and full text of the article please see the attached PDF-File (English version follows Russian version)].ABSTRACT To the 120th anniversary of birth of Alexander Chizhevsky - biophysics, founder of heliocosmic biology, aeroionification, electrogemodynamics, associate of the father of astronautics Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, a member of nearly two dozen foreign academies and an honorary professor at several universities. At the first international congress on biophysics and space biology in New York in 1939, he was elected in absentia a president of scientific forum, nominated for the Nobel Prize, justly called «Leonardo da Vinci of XX century». He was, among other things, a talented poet, philosopher, artist and landscape painter. Keywords: cosmonautics, biophysics, aeroionification, cosmic philosophy, heliobiology, energy of space and terrestrial biological media.

Poems of a Lifetime of Passion and Grumpiness

Poems of a Lifetime of Passion and Grumpiness

Quelque chose de cornélien. Alla riscoperta di Antoine Corneille: fratello, poeta, religioso, uomo

When talking about the Corneille family, we are all aware of the greatness, the exceptional ability of Thomas and, especially, Pierre. Their works stand as milestones of French theatre and worldwide literature. Nevertheless, it is less known the fact that there was a third brother, Antoine, who wrote as well: his works include poems, elegies, paraphrases mostly based on religious inspirations. What we do in this article is to try to retrace Antoine’s life path and works, in order to show that there is much more behind this man than the current perceived image of a less talented poet, an anonymous priest or a forgotten brother.

Haizi and contemporary Chinese romantic poetry

Modernism and Post-Modernism are widely viewed as the mainstreams of the poetic scene in contemporary China. However, we can still find some Romantic poets of great importance, which illustrates the revival of Romanticism in contemporary China. Haizi, a talented poet who has been exerting great influence on contemporary and younger poets since his death, is a great example which profoundly suggests the opportunity Romanticism has and the dilemma it confronts in the cultural context of contemporary China. The intimacy between Haizi and Romanticism lies mainly in the self-positioning and self-fashioning. Haizi’s emphasis on ego, subjectivity and will, his claim of poets to be “kings,” is a quite unique phenomenon in the contemporary Chinese scene where poets are marginalized and their subjectivities are weakened by the society and even themselves. Therefore, Haizi’s poetry not only reveals its connection with Romanticism, but also the tension between the ideals of Romantic poetics and the reality of contemporary Chinese society.

FOLKLORISMS AS LANGUAGE AESTHETIC SIGNS OF NATIONAL CULTURE IN SYDIR VOROBKEVYCH’S IDIOSTYLE

In the article the influence of linguistic-stylistic organization of folk genre texts on S.Vorobkevych’s idiostyle, who was a famous Bukovinian artist, which gained wide recognition as a talented poet, novelist, playwright, educator, social activist, folklorist and composer, is traced. It is found out that aesthetically completed language of folk literature as a peculiar standard of word-figurative thought expression has served for the writer as inexhaustible source of artistic expression. It is proved that the specific of artist’s idiostyle is in relation of his poetic words with folk literature, in combining traditional elements with author's individual.

Intertextuality Santa Maria della Salute in the light of literary criticism the second half of XX century

Santa Maria della Salute, exquisite poetic achievement of Laza Kostic, its modern poetic expression is confirmed by the fact that its ambiguity and layering owes many literary texts with which its author, but also the contemporary literary criticism referred to, and therefore represents the possibility of multiple interpretations intertextual. Although it belongs to the heritage of Serbian romantic poetry, its modernity brings it into direct frame with avant-garde poetic expression which is reflected in the semantic structure of its verses, but also through innovation of its rhythm and its rhymes. Its modernity is also in close modernity with which today can read Kostic theater pieces, such as Pera Segedinac and Maksim Crnojević. Important is Dnevnik Laza Kostic because through it can be interpreted interactivity psychological portrait of Laza Kostic and literary character Lenka Dunđerski intersecting in Anime psychological phenomenon through which Laza Kostic with the help of his poetic talent, he wrote his swan song, he enrolled at the top of Serbian poetry from its beginning until the present time.

‘Throttle College’? Ted Hughes's Cambridge Poetry

This work breaks new ground in Hughes studies by conducting the first literary analysis of his student creative writing, and reveals highly significant insights about a period in his life that scholarship has too often overlooked. During his student days, Hughes was researching some of the mythical themes that lend such strength to his published poetry, and some of his writing at Cambridge provided the groundwork for later published poems and prose criticism. His undergraduate writing suggests that Hughes was gaining confidence in his poetic talent, but that he wished to practise his skills by mastering traditional metres and rhyme schemes, and to deflect negative criticism by placing his poems within a satirical prose narrative.

Translations of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets: a Variant Translation by Sigitas Geda

The article examines the translation of William Shakespeare’s sonnets into Lithuanian by the poet Sigitas Geda (Vilnius: Žara, 2009). The authors discuss the importance of translations and interpreting via a third language for the formation of Italian and English sonnet structure; provide a short overview on Lithuanian translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets and their research; present some modern theoretical principles of poetry translation including translation adequacy, equivalence and cultural transfers (James S. Holmes, Francis R.Jones, Raymond van den Broeck, Theodore Horace Savory); examine general linguistic and cultural issues of Lithuanian translations of Shakespeare’s sonnets. A detailed analysis of the translation of six sonnets by Geda is done applying comparative and close reading methods. The article focuses on the transfer of figures of speech (sonnets 18, 73 and 116) and the deciphering and transformation of meaning (sonnets 27, 66 and 13). The resources include the edition of Shakespeare’s sonnets with commentaries (ed. Katherine Duncan Jones), the research of sonnets and their translations carried out by foreign authors (Manfred Pfister, Niveen Aziz Muhammed Tinah, Douglas Trevor, Lukas Erne, Catherine Belsey, Paul Edmondson, Stanley Wells, Zacharij Plavskin, Michail Morozov, Aleksandr Anikst). Occasionally, comparisons are made with translation by Samuil Marshak that had a greatly influence on Geda and with other variant translations of Russian and Lithuanian authors (Aleksys Churginas, Alfonsas Tyruolis-Šešplaukis, Tautvyda Marcinkevičiūtė, Antanas Danielius). In conclusion, sonnets translation by Geda preserves the text structure of the original, its syntactic and semantic nexus – extended metaphor and antithesis; however, it results in a great loss of poetic and semantic features and does not reveal the poetic talent of the translator.

Guillaume Saluste Du Bartas et The Arcadian Rhetorike d’Abraham Fraunce

En 1588 Abraham Fraunce publica en Londres su Arcadian Rhetorike. En su interior los versos de siete poetas ilustran la teoría de Abraham Fraunce. Entre estos poetas se encuentra Guillaume Saluste Du Bartas poeta hugonote francés, muy admirado en su tiempo, que llegó incluso a rivalizar en algunos momentos con el propio Ronsard. Frecuentó la corte del Rey de Navarra y su carrera poética así como la diplomática le llevaron a viajar por Europa donde sus numerosas traducciones le dieron fama internacional, especialmente en los países anglosajones. En este artículo intentaremos mostrar cómo esta difusión europea así como su tolerancia religiosa, su amor por la ciencia y su arte poético fueron características decisivas para Abraham Fraunce a la hora de incorporar versos de Du Bartas en su Arcadian Rhetorike.

„Walka z lekturą zakazaną”. Bibliologiczne spojrzenie na dyskusje wokół książki „zakazanej” i jej wpływu na dzieci i młodzież w końcu XIX w. i na pocz. XX w.

Polish librarian studies and readership studies, which were developing in the interwar period, were accompanied by the reflection upon the influence of literature on the upbringing and attitudes of young people. Bibliologists, literature experts, sociologists and theologists, as well as publicists and moral authorities were adding their voices to the discussion, criticising the publishing assortment, education system, and the families for neglect. They were demanding a stronger control or even censorship, preparing lists of harmful titles and suggesting alternative, recommended ones. This discussion was taking place in the background of political disputes and social transformations. Every time real names and titles would be mentioned, belonging to all literary genres of that period. Besides the Polish and foreign literary classics there were mediocre crime and romance novels – often the choice was a subject of premeditated manipulation and a harsh and simplified judgement, in effect of which talented writers and poets of all literary periods were branded as pornographers, depravers and scandalisers. The authors would like to organise the terminology used, which is present, but not always consistent and consequent, and review the list of ”forbidden books” in the scientific works and Polish journalism of the end of the 19 th century and the period 1918–1939; to suggest a typology which would take into account a book’s place in the literary culture as well as the type and level of its ”harmlessness”. These texts were not, after all, ”forbidden” in the legal sense and the harmlessness should be understood differently. We are dealing here mainly with the self-censorship of the teachers, librarians and priests, acting in accordance with a definite set of values. Many speeches were incidental, referring to a single or about a dozen titles; others were broader and detailed guides to the ”suspicious” spheres of literature, regarding which the dispute was brought up. The books were judged regarding their social, religious and political context. Examples of this type of censorship have been accepted by some elites and sometimes also a big part of the society. Discussions and arguments which would seem to belong to the past, return and are often twice as strong as before.

Book Review: The Oxford Handbook of John Donne

The Oxford Handbook of John Donne. Edited by Jeanne Shami, Dennis Flynn, and M. Thomas Hester. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. ISBN 9780199218608. Pp. xxxv+ 845. $150.00. The OED defines handbook as small book or treatise, such as may conveniently be held in hand; manual; also as a compendious book or treatise for guidance in any art, occupation, or study. With 845 pages and weighing about three pounds, this book just squeaks in to such definition. On whole, this is fine, reliable guide to Donne scholarship, dealing with entire range of author's writings. It consists of more than fifty essays by scholars at forefront of Donne studies. Because of varied nature of Donne's writings, editors have given half book (365 pages) to approaches by genre; another 296 pages are for historical and biographical backgrounds. But before those major parts, there is one on research resources, dealing first of all with production, dissemination, and early readership of Donne's writings. As more than 4,000 or parts survive in manuscript, Gary Stringer raises questions about just what Donne published and what he did not, and why. He also points to evidence that Donne significantly revised (22-23). Ernest Sullivan interestingly lists great diversity of known readers of Donne in his own century and next (33). Lara Crowley provides practical chapter on archival resources, giving fascinating example of Jeanne Shami's discovery of Donne Sermon manuscript (36, 38). There follow chapters on editing and editions of Donne, including chapter by Richard Todd that explains what Donne is accomplishing. Its aim is to recover and present exactly what Donne wrote (57) as far as possible. Todd also reports that complementary tools, including first-line indexes of seventeenth-century editions and major manuscripts, are available on project's website (59). With more than half of Donne's corpus still to go, Todd claims has reinvented editing of Donne's poetry; but Dayton Haskin cautions that the textual work of Variorum should be viewed less as an iconic monument than as critical (63). his chapter on modern editions of Donne's prose, Ernest Sullivan explains attempt to identify every manuscript and print version of text that could have been influenced by author (65). He evaluates modern editions, and points out that new Oxford editions are in works for prose letters (79) and sermons (70). latter, sermons will be arranged by place of preaching instead of chronological grouping, which I suggest could bring losses as well as gains. Donald Dickson calls attention to research tools and their pitfalls, reminding that no tool can replace careful study of Donne's writings (81). Dickson lists Donne Variorum, Digital Donne, number of bibliographies and concordances, electronic archive of sermons based on Potter and Simpson, and some (other) handbooks. Hugh Adlington commends work of scholarly community, noting that there have been since 1978 hundred or more scholarly publications on Donne annually, including work in John Donne Journal (sponsored by John Donne Society) and many others. Part 2 of book, on genres, begins with noting ways generic approach raises good questions about writings. Thomas Hester suggests that epigrams, Donne's earliest poems are instructive examples of his poetic achievement (104). Gregory Kneidel's chapter on formal verse satire deals well with classical and Renaissance patterns, beyond which Donne went in Satire 3, Of Religion. On elegies, R. V. Young finds that Donne exemplifies essence of humanist imitation, which is always an aspiration to emulate and even surpass, rather than merely to copy (142). He also insightfully suggests that, In addition to his sheer poetic talent, Donne also possessed perspective uniquely suited for undertaking because he was both an insider and an outsider with respect to society and cultural milieu that his represent (145). …

The Zajal: Popular Poetry and the Struggle over Lebanon's History

Druze historiography in modern Lebanon has developed in leaps and bounds since the early 1980s and has burst the confines of the written text to resonate in poetic and popular literature. One of the best examples of the latter is zajal, specifically the work of Ḥamdān, considered the greatest of contemporary Lebanese Druze popular poets. This study is based on still un-consulted oral poetry, principally in the form of cassette recordings of Ḥamdān's poetry to be found in Druze villages in Israel and Lebanon. The diffusion of Druze narrative into zajal poetry may be interpreted in two different ways: as a unique phenomenon of intertextuality between written texts and oral tradition, or as a manifestation of oral tradition. The present paper focuses on the correspondence between the contents of the written historiography and the ideological and historical meanings contained in Ḥamdān's poetry. Furthermore, it demonstrates how Ḥamdān employs his poetic talents to present the Druze narrative while simultaneously conducting a polemic against the Maronite establishment, historiography, and politics. The similarity in content between the written texts and the oral poetry assumes the existence of a dialog between the historiographical texts and the ongoing cultural and social process on the one hand and between the oral poetry and the written text on the other.

Cat Talk by Patricia MacLachlan (review)

Reviewed by: Cat Talk by Patricia MacLachlan Deborah Stevenson MacLachlan, Patricia. Cat Talk; written by Patricia MacLachlan and Emily MacLachlan Charest; illus. by Barry Moser. Tegen/HarperCollins, 2013. [32p]. ISBN 978-0-06-027978-3$17.99 Reviewed from galleys R 5–8 yrs. Though previously focusing on dogs (in Once I Ate a Pie, BCCB 6/06, etc.), Mac-Lachlan and Charest now turn their poetic talents to the feline world. Thirteen free-verse poems, each featuring a different cat as narrator, address cat behaviors from tunneling under the covers (“Under the blankets/ Is the best place”) to prowling (“You can’t see me when it’s dark. My fur is the color of night”) to lavishing affection (“I love everyone./ I fall over onto people I love”). Some poems are a little bland, but there’s plenty of enjoyable feline detail and credible character sketches (grumpy Sylvie says “I like three things: My food/ My windowsill/ My people./ And that’s enough”). The real impact comes from Moser’s vivid cat portraits, watercolors occasionally touched with subtle pencil in three-quarter to full spreads that politely balance the poems. Close-up facial portraits are furrily expressive, and poses are authentic in their supple-spined energy or comfortable collapse. These are appealing to read aloud and engaging to read alone, and they’ll provide plenty of inspiration for kids to write odes to their own kitties. Copyright © 2013 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

Un Parisien au pays des pingouins by Stéphane Ledien

Ledien, Stéphane. Un Parisien au pays des pingouins. Saint-Laurent: Réverbération, 2012. ISBN 978-2-923844-90-9. Pp. 166. $23 Can. This first fictional work is a collection of personal reflections on the author’s initial five months of l’hiver québécois as a transplanted Parisian. Told with humor and a poetic touch, his accounts convey his enthusiasm for the snowfalls and winter activities of his new surroundings. Moreover, the narrator’s understated fascination with the Québécois makes him aware of his evolving adjustment to boreal North America, both interpersonally as well as geographically. Fueled by his successful relationship with his montréalaise fiancée Chérie, the first-person narrator, when outfitted in several layers of clothing and snowshoes or cross-country skis, ventures frequently outside to confront the elements, including sub-zero temperatures. Tongue-in-cheek, he details the return of his cowlick because of the famous tuque keeping his head warm in “L’épi sous la tuque: épicure.”The narrator likewise laughs at himself for not wanting to wear mittens like the local people, in“Applaudissements des mitaines,”in which he explains how he and the audience, wearing mittens at an outdoor music festival, expressed their appreciation for the band through their muffled applause. At times, his humor is even based on wordplay, as in “Bonnets de nuit,” in which the narrator muses on the different meanings of the word “bonnet” in Québec and in France, only to conclude wittily: “De deux choses l’une, donc: ou le Québec cultive l’esprit de contradiction, ou les Français tiennent à tout prix à montrer qu’ils gardent la tête froide” (81). The novel also characterizes the author’s poetic talent. For example, in describing the plows clearing snow from the streets, he refers metaphorically to “les blindés repoussant l’ennemi blanc-poudreux jusqu’aux abords des trottoirs où il s’entasse, vaincu, lessivé, avant les prochains renforts tombés du ciel”(12). The narrator similarly describes the aftermath of the latest snowy assault on Montréal as follows:“Avec ce trop-plein d’hiver blanc, Montréal avait les allures d’une ville de neige en ruine. Ou en chantier, au choix” (107). Underpinning the narrator’s humor and poetic bent is his curiosity about Québec’s native inhabitants. Whereas vocabulary and behavioral differences between the French and the Québécois serve as material for Ledien’s early accounts, his later reflections comment on his rapprochement with these Francophone Canadians. For instance, in “Rive droite, rive gauche, rive nord, rive sud,” the narrator compares the Left and Right Banks of the Seine in Paris to the North and South Banks of the Saint Lawrence in Québec, only to remark that he grew up in a French department with a social standing like that of the latter river’s“rive sud.”Subsequently, in“Histoire belge façon Terre-Neuve,” he explains that the Québécois poke fun at the Newfies just as the French joke about the Belgians: “Les Québécois ont leurs Belges [...] on est toujours le Belge ou la blonde de quelqu’un” (110). A third account,“Trappeur du dimanche,” further demonstrates the narrator’s growing emotional attachment to Québec and its people. Through his expression,“nos ancêtres les trappeurs,” he ultimately closes the gap between the French and the Québécois (70). University of Texas, El Paso Jane E. Evans 274 FRENCH REVIEW 87.1 ...

Des œuvres décentes qui font rougir : la métaphore véhiculant la sexualité (apparemment) absente dans quelques romans zoliens

Sex and sexuality are two obsessions of the 19th century. As the literature of this time, influenced by the Victorian hypocritical morality, rejects these subjects, considered as “immoral”, the relation of any form of sexual act is consequently absent in the works of 19th century writers, even of those who consider themselves as realists. However, the work of a writer like Emile Zola cannot overlook this problem, so important for naturalism. For Zola, sex is a vital activity and should be shown in works of art. Therefore, to give his writings the appearance of decency, Zola uses metaphors that “sexualise” some elements of the world of his novels, like plants, animals, things, places and everyday occupations. This allows him to show, in an imaginary way, the aspects of life that cannot be displayed openly and directly. Thank to his poetic talent these images constitute a valuable part of his Rougon-Macquart series.

Geoffrey Philp, Dub Wise

Geoffrey Philp is a poet and short-story writer who was born in 1958 in Jamaica and emigrated to Miami in 1979. He has been living there ever since. His first four collections of poetry (Exodus and Other Poems, 1990; Florida Bound, 1995; Hurricane Center, 1998; and Xango Music, 2001) signalled the arrival of a major new poetic talent walking in the footsteps of Derek Walcott, Mervyn Morris, Dennis Scott and Kamau Brathwaite, among others. His most recent collection, Dub Wise (Peepal Tree Pres...

Scenes: Jaded Ibis Press: An interview with Debra Di Blasi

Scenes: Jaded Ibis Press: An interview with Debra Di Blasi Debra Di Blasi Click for larger view View full resolution Jaded Ibis Logo Could you briefly describe Jaded Ibis Press’s history? I founded the press in 2008 after realizing that 1) some superlatively original books written by people I respected were rejected as “unmarketable”; 2) print-on-demand technologies improved in quality and price; and 3) I could merge DIY technologies into a multimedia publishing company that addressed culture in the twenty-first century. We’ve really only been publishing full-steam since January 2011 after a protracted move from the Midwest to Seattle, Washington in mid-2010. Click for larger view View full resolution Cover, We: a reimagined family history Who is your audience, and in what ways are you trying to reach them? We’re striving for crossover audiences that may read broadly and even conservatively, but who increasingly want to be astonished by something new and provocative. These are contemplative readers and thinkers who seek within language, form, and narrative multiple clues to what it means to be human and alive in this particular time and place in the history of the universe. Our reach continues to expand, from readers of scholarly publications like American Book Review to newspapers and magazines like Forbes and O’s “Best Summer Reading” book list. I spend two to three hours online every day reading blogs, magazines, and news sites to find ways to insert Jaded Ibis into conversations. (We have gotten a number of interviews as a result.) I also use social media and widely disseminated press releases. Click for larger view View full resolution Cover, Waiting up for the End of the World What is your role in the publishing scene? I view all Jaded Ibis business and aesthetic decisions through the warped lens of “industry standards and expectations” in order to shift the (broken) paradigm away from anything that limits creative breadth, chooses commerce over art, or doesn’t intelligently address contemporary culture and technology. As a representative of the Press, I frequently lecture on narrative forms as they relate to current and future technologies at venues like the AWP, &NOW Conference, universities, and colleges. I’m writing a nonfiction multimedia book, Stuck in the Crosswalk: The Intersection of Literature and Technology, that provides a current and projected map of our location in lit-tech history and what directions I think we may, will, and should head. It is as much prophesy as guidebook. Writers of all genres are becoming more intrepid and responding to the mixed- and multimedia aesthetics that surround us. I find it interesting that so many prominent literary agencies are now signing these writers and that Jaded Ibis, likely as a result of generous media coverage, is receiving huge numbers of submissions from the broad spectrum of agents and writers alike. Its humbling, thrilling, and a bit daunting for our wee staff. How would you characterize the work you publish? I and my poetry editor, the exceptionally talented poet Sam Witt, make all of the selection decisions. There are no manuscript screeners because we don’t want someone who has not been thoughtfully reading and processing information for at least three decades to decide what is original and demands a presence beyond the writer’s mind. We prefer works that surpass easy categorization, but when asked for standard marketing terminology, we say that we publish innovative (experimental, avant-garde, hybrid, multimedia, undefined) prose and poetry. All of our books are eventually published in four editions: full color, black and white, eBook, and fine art limited edition. Each title includes visual art by a notable or emerging artist(s) and audio track(s) of music, spoken word, or sound art. Fine art editions incorporate a variety of materials to conceptually reflect the content of the book. Click for larger view View full resolution Cover, Family Romance What’s in the future for Jaded Ibis Press? Jaded Ibis Press and its parent company Jaded Ibis Productions, are moving deeper into technologies significantly beyond eBooks. Our author c.vance already adapted his beautiful print novel, We: a reimagined family history, to an iPad interactive book, and...

Water’s Footfall by Sohrab Sepehri

colorado review 168 Water’s Footfall, by Sohrab Sepehri translated by Kazim Ali with Mohammad Jafar Mahallati Omnidawn, 2011 reviewed by Roger Sedarat The modest though significant recent influx of translations in American publishing, often by smaller presses, continues to introduce English readers to established poets from various literary traditions who have gone unrecognized throughout most of the world. Kazim Ali’s rendering of the Persian poet Sohrab Sepehri’s long lyrical poem Water’s Footfall, translated with a scholar of Islamic studies and Sufi poetry, offers fidelity to both the letter and the spirit of an important modern book of verse from Iran that warrants reading. Sohrab Sepehri (1928–1980), from Kashan, Iran, authored six collections during his lifetime, with three additional collections published posthumously. This book, his fourth, was written in the 1960s, after he had already made much progress toward developing his distinct poetic voice. A painter by training , he remains well known among Iranians for his visual art in addition to his poetry. (In 2009–2010, the Tehran Museum of Modern Art featured a retrospective of his work.) Like other talented poets who paint, especially those from the Far East, such as Buson and Mi Fu, he imbues his writing with rich visual imagery from nature. Such comparisons to Japanese and Chinese poet-artists prove particularly apt for Sepehri, who retains throughout his writing a keen cosmopolitan interest in the literatures of Asia as well as those of Europe. Consider for example the simple, direct descriptions in the following passage. With editing and different line breaks, this could become haiku: The florist is having a fire-sale. A poet hangs a rope-swing between two jasmine trees. A schoolboy pelting stones at the wall. A child spitting apricot pits on his father’s prayer rug, a goat drinks long from a map of the Caspian. A clothesline—bra flapping, impatient in the wind. An especially modern reason for a poet to read poetry outside of his or her traditional domain is to absorb various influences 169 Book Notes in one’s own writing, heeding Ezra Pound’s twentieth-century axiom to “make it new.” Sepehri offers a great example as to how poets from traditions outside of the better-known westerners like Pound and Eliot appropriated styles and themes in their work. In the lines above, active, transitory nature, delivered with accessible diction, gets metaphorically mapped onto the Caspian Sea, as the child offers defiant commentary on parental authority metonymically linked to an Islamic prayer rug. Such conflation of a transnatural sensibility, deriving in part from readings outside Persian verse and juxtaposed with distinct cultural allusions to geography and religion, begins to inform this poet’s modernist moves. Modernism itself means something quite different in other cultures, and this translation of Sepehri’s verse begins to demonstrate an important lesson in Iranian poetics of the last century. Breaking from meter and rhyme in Europe and America quickly became a given, as western poets sought further and much more radical experimentation, whereas for Persian poets like Sohrab Sepehri, Nima Youshij, and Forough Farrokhzad, who come from a two-thousand-year tradition defined by the closed form of the ghazal, this violation itself very much remained the revolution . Of course, these individuals rendered their verse distinct through various new thematic as well as stylistic choices. While at first glance a long poem like Water’s Footfall appears conservative relative to poems written by Robert Lowell or E. E. Cummings in America during the 1960s, a closer reading of this accessible book on its own, Persian terms, reveals a significantly different modernist perspective. A series of declarative statements, often linked by anaphora, reports upon the poet’s experience in nature. Sufism, which derives from Islam yet makes, like Emerson in the American romantic tradition, a religion of nature, informs the entire twentythree -page poem. (The small book places, on each facing page, the Persian translation, which, even for those unable to read in the language, shows how close to the form the translators remain .) In addition to ordering verse by syntax and idea instead of by meter and rhyme, Sepehri avoids the dominant Persian tendency toward didacticism, allowing the...

The Anthology of Rap (review)

Reviewed by: The Anthology of Rap Erik Nielson Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois, eds. The Anthology of Rap. New Haven: Yale UP, 2010. 920 pp. $35.00. In Book of Rhymes: The Poetics of Hip Hop (2009), Adam Bradley set out to establish the literary merits of rap music, arguing that rappers are some of the most vibrant and talented poets we have today. Book of Rhymes was by no means the first work to acknowledge rap as poetry; anthologies such as Ishmael Reed’s From Totems to Hip Hop, Riverside’s Call and Response, and The Norton Anthology of African American Literature had already presented rap lyrics in distinctly literary contexts. However, it was likely the first book-length study of the tropes and formal techniques employed in rap lyrics and the first extended justification for understanding rap within a poetic, rather than largely musical, tradition. With Yale’s release of The Anthology of Rap in 2010, Bradley and co-editor Andrew DuBois have built upon Bradley’s Book of Rhymes to produce another first: as they note in the opening lines of their introduction, their book “is the first anthology of lyrics representing rap’s recorded history from the late 1970s to the present. It tells the story of rap as lyric poetry” (xxix). For this reason alone, Henry Louis Gates suggests, The Anthology of Rap is a groundbreaking collection that “masterfully assembles part of a new vanguard of American poetry” (xxvi). Scaling upwards of 900 pages, The Anthology of Rap compiles the lyrics to nearly 300 songs from a wide variety of artists over rap’s thirty-year history. The lyrics are grouped into four historical periods: The Old School (1978–1984), The Golden Age (1985–1992), The Mainstream (1993–1999), and The New Millennium (2000–2010). At the beginning of each section, the editors provide insightful descriptions of the most salient lyrical changes and innovations during the period in question; before the lyrics of each new artist, they provide a brief biography. At the end of the whole, there is an oddly placed “Lyrics for Further Study” section with songs from rappers whose work is not represented within the main segments of the book. These artists (including heavyweights Missy Elliott, EPMD, and Naughty By Nature) do not receive biographies even though their critical acclaim and influence outshine some [End Page 719] of the artists (e.g., Eyedea & Abilities, Devin the Dude, and Bahamadia) who are deemed worthy of biographies earlier in the anthology. Since the historical sections of the book cover the entirety of rap’s recorded history, it is unclear why any of these “further” artists—particularly those of Elliott and company’s caliber—were not folded into them. Perhaps the most difficult part of assembling an anthology is the seemingly straightforward business of deciding what to include. All things considered, the editors handle this well, making sure to embrace rappers across time periods and balancing commercially successful performers with equally talented, but less well known, underground acts. This is, after all, an anthology meant to illustrate rappers’ lyrical prowess, and as fans of hip hop are well aware, the most skilled MCs are not necessarily those who have the largest fan base, or contracts with major record labels. In addition, Bradley and DuBois do an admirable job of representing female contributions—particularly important within hip hop scholarship, which sometimes presents rap in exclusively masculine terms—without exaggerating, and thereby distorting, their influence in an unquestionably male-dominated genre. And they achieve all of this balance even while navigating the labyrinthine process of securing lyrical permissions to songs that often have multiple stakeholders. The thirty-eight-page “Credits” section reveals just how much time and effort went into acquiring these lyrics—yet as the absence of work by giants such as Outkast attests, the process of getting permissions is sometimes too onerous, even for a press with the power and prestige of the Yale brand. The editors also deserve credit for their attempt to provide clean transcriptions of the lyrics, which rap’s dense and changing slang, coded references, intentional mispronunciations, and sometimes blazing-fast delivery defy at every turn. Indeed, aside from compiling such...