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Unread 11-11-2022, 05:07 AM
W T Clark W T Clark is offline
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Join Date: May 2020
Location: England
Posts: 1,453
Default Wyatt is our Mandelstam

His love poems are full of skitterings and fear, and the Henretian court — the first true modern form of tyranny — the Stalin-purged state microcosmed to the width of the court, — is in them everywhere:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...t-doth-harbour
https://poets.org/poem/they-flee-me
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...ere-is-an-hind
These poems surpass much of Petrarch, I think, it is only when Petrarch leans into the full surreality of love that he seems a great artist to me.
But Wyatt is more than just a translator. He breaks down the walls of the personal and traditional, so that his trauma becomes our trauma:
https://englishrenaissancewords.word...nd-whoso-list/
https://isleofinisfree.wordpress.com...d-ease-retain/
These are more than just gnomic utterance from Rebus and Seneca. They are also terrifyingly effective. "These bloody days have broken my heart", will remain with me all my life. There is a terrible beauty of savage technique, understatement, and personal horror. And this last is a culmination of rage:
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poe...own-john-poynz
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