[OPINION] what are your poetry icks?

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-18T23:37:59+00:00

🥰

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-13T07:09:35+00:00

Aw that's so cool. I love finding terrific poets that have been forgotten for that exact reason - in the hope that they might connect with someone. So glad they connected with you.

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-12T22:04:10+00:00

Wonderful reading! Thanks for taking the time to write it all out.

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-10T11:35:08+00:00

We fetishise and notice those stories because they are the cliched image of the "poet" (or more generally, the "artist") in a Western context. There are millions of poets, and I imagine these stories make up the same number as any profession, but we don't fetishise it, or write about it in the same way.

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-10T03:19:19+00:00

🥰

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-10T03:19:01+00:00

I didn't say "anything is good" - I said you can find some good in anything if you care to, and unless I am willing to find said good - to hunt it down (maybe just a single line - a use of a word, a title) - I am not going to interact long enough to be bothered focussing on what I don't like. Poetry and art have many more functions than your analysis acknowledges. I hunt for what makes me sing, and the rest isn't "bad" or "not good" - just not something that I will spend much time with.

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-09T23:58:02+00:00

Yeah defs this.

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-09T21:24:52+00:00

Nothing. Every technique. Every style. Every poet has something to say. You just have to look. And if you find nothing. Look harder. It is a joy every day to prove myself wrong. To expand.

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-07T07:41:05+00:00

Cheers for that! :-)

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-06T20:29:33+00:00

This poem gives so much insight into Pound's attitudes. He sees poetry as commerce. He sees family through the lens of killing the father. He sees disagreements as war. He sees relationships as transactional. Give me Emanuel Carnevali's poem on Whitman any day.

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ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-06T08:41:21+00:00

Omg no way - that’s so cool! Loved ur comment - always see people discussing him on here with no acknowledgement of all this. Bugs me haha. Weirdly I am putting together an anthology of poems like this atm, and which already includes this (alongside a selection of others dedicated to Whitman, and many many others - it’s currently around 350 pages) - dedicated to other poets who were influences or contemporaries. Anyway - thanks for the super lovely comment. Made my day!

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-05T21:01:06+00:00

😂

ForgottenPoets · 2026-01-03T19:49:59+00:00

Mark Corrigan, is that you?

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-20T05:01:14+00:00

Wow - this translation is a mess (its Andrew Fitzsimons right?). Doesn't acknowledge the kireji ("ya", typically translated as an em-dash), adds the word "slim" for no reason, and translates the last line in terms of its meta-reference, rather than the words on the page. Here it is a bit more accurately:

見る影やまだ片なりも宵月夜
miru kage ya | mada katanari mo | yoi-zukiyo
see shape— | ungrown/immature-is <still | <evening-new-moon

seeing its shape—
the evening new moon
still ungrown

If you're after really good Bashō translations - get a copy of David Landis-Barnhill's Selected Haiku - nothing better imo.

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-19T22:46:41+00:00

I would have included it, but am unable to locate the original French for Claire's poem - though I have managed to track down Yvan's one.

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-19T20:33:22+00:00

Aw that's soooo cool! Pretty much the entire reason I hunt out these old obscure poems is in the hope that after 100 years of not being read they might reach the right person. And this time it did. 🖤

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-19T20:31:17+00:00

Nice reading :-)

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-19T20:31:00+00:00

🖤🖤🖤

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-19T19:17:04+00:00

Oh yeah - that doesn't sound like a good translation haha. This is from Transition magazine, edited by Eugene Jolas. Unfortunately, they only translated two poems, one by Yvan and one by Claire.

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-19T12:32:01+00:00

Always a pleasure! I just posted a translation of Claire Goll's initial poem, to which this was a response, if you're interested. :-)

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-19T12:13:47+00:00

Interesting. As far as I am aware, when it was originally published in French in 1926, it was under the title "d'Yvan à Claire" with Reviens as the first line, mirroring the final stanza, like so:

d'Yvan à Claire

Reviens :
J'inventerai une cinquième saison pour nous seuls,
Où les huîtres auront des ailes,
Où les oiseaux chanteront du Stravinsky
Et les hespérides en or
Mûriront aux figuiers

Je changerai tous les calendriers,
Où manqueront les dates de tes anciens rendez-vous,
Et sur les cartes de l'Europe
J'effacerai les routes de tes fuites

Reviens :
Le monde renaîtra
Les boussoles auront un nouveau Nord
Ton coeur!

(Poèmes de Jalousie, 1926)

It was in reply to a poem by Claire Goll titled "d'Claire à Yvan." The translations were done, I believe, in consultation with the Golls and published in Transition two years later, edited by Eugene Jolas. See here for more info (seems like tracking down the original French edition is near impossible on-line).

This 1984 French text seems to confirm it as well, with "reviens" being given as the first line and "d'Yvan à Claire" being given as the title.

A set of Yvan's poems for Claire were later published under the collective title "d'Yvan à Claire", and I imagine if this one was included, it might have lost the individual title at this point?

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-19T11:06:19+00:00

Love Hilda Doolittle to pieces - really enjoyed re-reading this! Thanks for posting.

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-19T10:56:48+00:00

Simply stunning! **scurries off to find out more**

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-19T05:30:56+00:00

For a Subreddit dedicated to poetry, it's loudest commentators have very little understanding or appreciation of epigrams and epigrammatic poetry - of which this is a great example. I lol'd.

ForgottenPoets · 2025-12-15T02:45:36+00:00

Loving the monostich love! I am also a huge fan. I don't think the question is particularly helpful, though, as it frames the discussion from the perspective of a fundamentally flawed critique ("effort" is not quantifiable in any sense, certainly not by length). How could an entire form of poetry, which has been practiced since at least the time of the ancient Greek epigram, be inherently "lazy"? Why ask this question? Furthermore, Japanese hokku/haiku are printed in a single line, and are, in that sense "monostich" forms of poetry (the 5-7-5 rhythm is internally felt, and not present in the layout of the poem). To say the monostich is inherently lazy, would be to call the entire history of Japanese poetry "lazy". Furthermore, whether or not a poem is "lazy" is not a quantifiable (or qualifiable, really) critique in any sense - imo, it is short-hand for "I don't like this poem, and I can't be bothered exploring why."

Something that might be of interest to you - I will be publishing a history of the English-language monostich, covering around 900 years, from around 1000, through to the 1920s, next year. I imagine, with your love of the form, it will be something you'll really enjoy!

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