It doesn't suck and it isn't doggerel. If it is pornography and therefore aaargh, then we'd better stop reading a lot of classical poetry, Ovid, Catullus, Propertius, Sappho, Meleager of Cos that I translated in Ablemuse, the 'puerile Muse' of Strato of Sardis...
Rochester
Chaucer,
Shakespeare (Venus and Adonis)
Marlowe (Hero and Leander and gay porn at that)
and there are those French guys, Baudelaire and Rimbaud
You cn read lots of this deviant stuff, though not alas the Auden, in The Faber Book of Blue Verse, republished and renamed (though not by me) Making Love to Marilyn Monroe. You buy it directly from Whitturf and he'll give you a good deal and sign it into the bargain. End of Commercial Break.
Orwn, Auden wrote six poems in bad German to his German boys in about 1932. They are translated by David Constantine and are very touching.
Last edited by John Whitworth; 04-07-2017 at 01:02 AM.
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