Quote:
Originally posted by robert mezey:
Janet,
You mean the Borges poem? It's straight pentameter, and for
masochistic and sentimental reasons, I kept strictly to Fitzgerald's "Rubiyat", rhyming exactly and using no metrical
variations that he didn't use. Borges does the same thing in Spanish, though of course he can't begin to sound anything like Fitzgerald. I'm glad you mentioned the poem, becauee I think it is perhaps the finest "ars poetica" since Horace.
(I must say that I thought the Collins and Bly attempts, and some others, were pretty awful, and yes, that MacLeish poem does make me groan: almost everything he says about a poem strikes me as wrong or untrue. For example, a poem must mean AND be. Being is not worth much if it's meaningless.)
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Robert,
Of course the Borges is in IP. I had been reading a lot of Sapphics etc and your/Borges? line endings achieve a similar ritualistic chanting effect. My mistake and apologies for my rushed reading.
May I be an intermediary between you and MacLeish and suggest that if a poem's meaning adds up to more than journalism it is because it has achieved a state of "being"? I have read poems that have little meaning but a strong presence and others with nothing but meaning and no presence. I agree with you except to say that if one thing can be dispensed with it is, in the end, "meaninng". I am often exasperated by online comments that want more information. I usually feel that less information would strengthen the poem.
Again my humble apologies for my Greek reading of your quite wonderful translation of Borges. Both of you travelled in time so the mistake was probably not as far out as all that. The poem is about that after all and has far more "being" than most I have read. Thanks for it.
Janet