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  1. #501
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    Default Re: What are you reading now - and then

    Neil Gaiman's American Gods for me better then the show (which I also like)



  2. #502
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading now - and then

    Thanks Stavros, for your remembrance on Lawrence Ferlinghetti who died Feb. 22 2021 .
    Ah yes, I remember those days when I first discovered Ferlinghetti and City Lights Books in my Junior year of high school in 1965. I bought Ginsberg's "Howl" , and Ferlinghetti's "A Coney Island of the Mind" and other great City Lights editions of works by Gary Snyder (who is still writing) and others.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Ferlinghetti


    Last edited by sukumvit boy; 02-24-2021 at 05:55 PM.

  3. #503
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    Default Re: What are you reading now - and then

    Perhaps you could tell me who, other than the obvious ones, are your favourite American poets?

    For reasons I can't explain, we had a teacher when I was in Junior school, ie 7-12 who loved Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha in particular -possibly she was influenced by a generation before, ie teachers born in the 19th century for whom Longfellow was essential reading? I doubt even High School students read him these days. Whitman, Hughes, Frost, Lowell, the Beats, Ferlinghetti -and Sylvia Plath, maybe even Denise Levertov and Adrienne Rich were staples for me, but there must be less obvious ones you can recommend. And no, it doesn't include Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash or Robbie Robertson -I knew an American who insisted he was one of American's finest poets.



  4. #504
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading now - and then

    Quote Originally Posted by Stavros View Post
    Perhaps you could tell me who, other than the obvious ones, are your favourite American poets?

    For reasons I can't explain, we had a teacher when I was in Junior school, ie 7-12 who loved Longfellow, The Song of Hiawatha in particular -possibly she was influenced by a generation before, ie teachers born in the 19th century for whom Longfellow was essential reading? I doubt even High School students read him these days. Whitman, Hughes, Frost, Lowell, the Beats, Ferlinghetti -and Sylvia Plath, maybe even Denise Levertov and Adrienne Rich were staples for me, but there must be less obvious ones you can recommend. And no, it doesn't include Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash or Robbie Robertson -I knew an American who insisted he was one of American's finest poets.
    American poets would be Whitman ,I carried a worn copy of "Leaves of Grass" with me the last 2 years of high school, and Lowell and the Beats particularly Gary Snyder. My all time favorite poet is your British T S Elliot , at one time I committed "The Waste Land and Other Poems " to memory.
    Other than that I'm very interested in Chinese poetry particularly the "Hermit Poets" and the work of Bill Porter aka Red Pine,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Pine_(author)


    Last edited by sukumvit boy; 02-25-2021 at 09:25 PM.

  5. #505
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    Default Re: What are you reading now - and then

    Thanks for the recommendations, as I have not heard of Red Pine before and have found some intersting articles to read. I have some compilations of Chinese and Japanese poetry on my shelf for years, but have not take a special interest in going further. I pondered reading The Dream of the Red Chamber/Song of the Stone, but have not done more than that. I spent a month travelling through China and should probably have read it then. I have tended to be lukewarm on Chinese culture, as I find it more vulgar than the Japanese. It is most noticeable in visual arts, where Japanese painting, though similar in its use of materials to the Chinese (and probably not as original as most educated Chinese will tell you the Japanese poached everything from them) has a subtlety I don't find in Chinese, and the Haiku is even more dense than the one-breath poetry these Asians seem to specialise in. Japanesee films are definitely preferred to the Chinese, and I am not just referring to Jackie Chan. Why Chinese poetry never developed an 'epic' or 'heroic' style is not clear to me, though the European classics, such as The Iliad and The Odyssey were not written down but oral poems long before writing was common, and their length is due to them being moral tales spun out nigh after night or day after day.

    TS Eliot is a problematic poet for me, because I was hooked when I first read him and it was my introduction to that generation of moderns. I recall it being set to music by Tim Souster at a concert in London with the late Marius Goring as the reader, but my view on Eliot has changed a lot since then. In particular Four Quartets is a disturbing journey into a form of Christian Fascism which has its connections to Charles Maurras, a 'thinker' Eliot admired and continued to admire long after his death in 1952. Eliot is one of those who wrote superb poetry that caused a frenzy of rage and argument amongs those who took it seriously at the time (cf FR Leavis, New Bearings in English Poetry, 1932). But his politics is a major turn off.

    Just a thought -do you think William Carlos Williams was influenced by Chinese poets? Thinking of the Red Wheelbarrow...



  6. #506
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading now - and then

    Quote Originally Posted by Stavros View Post
    Thanks for the recommendations, as I have not heard of Red Pine before and have found some intersting articles to read. I have some compilations of Chinese and Japanese poetry on my shelf for years, but have not take a special interest in going further. I pondered reading The Dream of the Red Chamber/Song of the Stone, but have not done more than that. I spent a month travelling through China and should probably have read it then. I have tended to be lukewarm on Chinese culture, as I find it more vulgar than the Japanese. It is most noticeable in visual arts, where Japanese painting, though similar in its use of materials to the Chinese (and probably not as original as most educated Chinese will tell you the Japanese poached everything from them) has a subtlety I don't find in Chinese, and the Haiku is even more dense than the one-breath poetry these Asians seem to specialise in. Japanesee films are definitely preferred to the Chinese, and I am not just referring to Jackie Chan. Why Chinese poetry never developed an 'epic' or 'heroic' style is not clear to me, though the European classics, such as The Iliad and The Odyssey were not written down but oral poems long before writing was common, and their length is due to them being moral tales spun out nigh after night or day after day.

    TS Eliot is a problematic poet for me, because I was hooked when I first read him and it was my introduction to that generation of moderns. I recall it being set to music by Tim Souster at a concert in London with the late Marius Goring as the reader, but my view on Eliot has changed a lot since then. In particular Four Quartets is a disturbing journey into a form of Christian Fascism which has its connections to Charles Maurras, a 'thinker' Eliot admired and continued to admire long after his death in 1952. Eliot is one of those who wrote superb poetry that caused a frenzy of rage and argument amongs those who took it seriously at the time (cf FR Leavis, New Bearings in English Poetry, 1932). But his politics is a major turn off.

    Just a thought -do you think William Carlos Williams was influenced by Chinese poets? Thinking of the Red Wheelbarrow...
    I certainly think that through his friendships with Ezra Pound and Allen Ginsberg he was influenced by both Chinese and Japanese poetry,they were steeped in it ,Pound's "The Chinese Written Character As A Medium For Poetry " comes to mind."The Red Wheelbarrow" is reminiscent of the Japanese Haiku poetic form.
    Bill Porter has also written a host of excellent travel books


    Last edited by sukumvit boy; 02-26-2021 at 10:47 PM.

  7. #507
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading now - and then

    With regard to the visual arts ,I am a student of both Chinese ink painting and Japanese Sumi-e painting and was fortunate to have studied Sumi-e with Koho Yamamoto in New York City in the 1970's.
    https://nyhandmadecollective.org/blo...citys-treasure



  8. #508
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    Default Re: What are you reading now - and then

    Quote Originally Posted by sukumvit boy View Post
    American poets would be Whitman ,I carried a worn copy of "Leaves of Grass" with me the last 2 years of high school
    BBC Radio 3 repeated a broadcast of Song of Myself from 2016, based on another incomplete project by Orson Welles -he reads the opening, some of the middle and then the last passages, interspersed with new voices, male and female, filling in the gaps, with recorded music and sound. It is quite long, but mesmeric in its effect, those waves of words washing over the soul and ending with that lyrical flourish (Verse 52), worth quoting in its entirety, and hearing Welles baritone voice do it some justice...


    The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me—he complains of my gab and my loitering.

    I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable;
    I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

    The last scud of day holds back for me;
    It flings my likeness after the rest, and true as any, on the shadow’d wilds;
    It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

    I depart as air—I shake my white locks at the runaway sun;
    I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

    I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love;
    If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.

    You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean;
    But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
    And filter and fibre your blood.

    Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;
    Missing me one place, search another;
    I stop somewhere, waiting for you.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0770h0v


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  9. #509
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading now - and then

    Recommended; V S Naipaul https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V._S._Naipaul
    I previously read "A House For Mister Biswas" and just finished "Miguel Street" and "The Middle Passage"



  10. #510
    5 Star Poster sukumvit boy's Avatar
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    Default Re: What are you reading now - and then

    Quote Originally Posted by Stavros View Post
    BBC Radio 3 repeated a broadcast of Song of Myself from 2016, based on another incomplete project by Orson Welles -he reads the opening, some of the middle and then the last passages, interspersed with new voices, male and female, filling in the gaps, with recorded music and sound. It is quite long, but mesmeric in its effect, those waves of words washing over the soul and ending with that lyrical flourish (Verse 52), worth quoting in its entirety, and hearing Welles baritone voice do it some justice...


    The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me—he complains of my gab and my loitering.

    I too am not a bit tamed—I too am untranslatable;
    I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.

    The last scud of day holds back for me;
    It flings my likeness after the rest, and true as any, on the shadow’d wilds;
    It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk.

    I depart as air—I shake my white locks at the runaway sun;
    I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags.

    I bequeathe myself to the dirt, to grow from the grass I love;
    If you want me again, look for me under your boot-soles.

    You will hardly know who I am, or what I mean;
    But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
    And filter and fibre your blood.

    Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;
    Missing me one place, search another;
    I stop somewhere, waiting for you.


    https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0770h0v
    Thanks,great link. Nicely done program. It's good to hear Well's voice again and the other readers are also very good.



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