[Clive Watkins]

A very long time ago, I wrote a small number of poems in French. None of them seemed to me successful. I did it because I thought it might be fun to try; and it was.

Even longer ago, as a schoolboy, I was taught to write Latin hexameters and elegiac couplets. As Susan says, “It was once part of regular instruction for people learning Latin to be taught how to write poetry in it.” I was one of those. I could not do it now; I could barely do it then; but – yes – I found it fun.

Clive

[Mary Meriam]

Pauline Mary Tarn was born Paddington, England; moved to France and became Renée Vivien; then wrote exclusively in French. I spoke French only (no English allowed) for seven weeks at Middlebury College. I wrote one poem in French, which the prof. (who was from France) published in some newsletter or other. I feel le francais always waiting in the wings to make another appearance on stage.

[Duncan Gillies MacLaurin]

I'll come clean and confess I included a rhyming, metred poem in French called "La Mort" in my collection of poems, Red Moon, published under the nom de guerre, Gillies Crisp, at the age of 25. The rashness of youth. I doubt I'd be so bold nowadays even though I'm fluent in Danish after living and working in Denmark for 22 years.

Duncan

[Jill Domschot]

Seree-- I've had most of my Spanish poems critiqued by Span. lit/poetry profs. In fact, once, I took part in a multi-lingual poetry reading. Good God, if I thought the difficulty was in writing or editing the Spanish poems, I was wrong. Once I was at the mic with an audience full of native Spanish speakers, I thought I was going to swoon like a gothic heroine -- not to mention the fact that I was very pregnant at the time. So I plunged in, only to have an audience member request that I speak so that human beings could hear me! It was a memorable day to say the least. Jill

[Gregory Dowling]

George Szirtes is another interesting example. He came to England from Hungary at the age of eight and he still speaks English with a slight foreign accent. I suppose you could say that it's a case of the second language becoming the first language. I wonder at what age that stops being possible. As Julie points out, it happened with Charles Simic and Ha Jin (whom I don't know) in their teens.

[Tim Murphy]

Rhina came at seven, and although English is her second language, for 70 years it has been her primary language. Her Spanish is actually pretty bad. She can't understand a word I say!

[R. S. Gwynn]

I sympathize with Rhina, Tim. I, too, have a lot of trouble understanding you, in English, though there is a slight Kentucky twang (obviously acquired through long practice) in your accent that is occasionally recognizable.

As for Mike Juster, I had to stop Gone Baby Gone the other night and pull up the subtitles: "If youse stat believing she's gan in youse hat, what'll cumma youse?" Say what?

There were a couple of Americans who headed for Paris and became minor symboliste poets. One was named Viele-Griffin; I forget the other one, who wasn't much good either. Eliot wrote a couple of French poems, but I'm incapable of judging them on their merits. Pound wrote in several languages (including, I am told, English), none of them very well and none of them having contemporary speakers (so who could tell?). I am still not sure what language Geoffrey Hill writes in. West Midlands?

I think that the struggles of non-native English poets to attain some kind of fluency is poignant but ultimately depressing. Brodsky has been mentioned. Consider poor Philip Levine, who has been trying without much success to write in English for many years; Yvor Winters tried to help him but the case was too far gone. John Ashbery, of course, is a French poet who has as yet been untranslated into our tongue. Perhaps he is untranslatable. I am still not sure of the great poet of Canada, Anne Carson, who writes, I am told, in Canadian, a language with which I am, alas, unfamiliar. John Whitworth, noted English poet, writes in English, thank god, but uses a lot of words that aren't even in the OED. But I suspect that most of them are nasty anyway. So I just guess at what they mean. It's better that way.

[R. S. Gwynn]

Speaking of movies (which we weren't actually), I've always loved that scene in The Grand Illusion where von Stroheim and Fresnay first meet. The drift from German, to French, to English--both fluently--just making small talk. It's all a test of "class" to make sure they both belong to the same one. That world, like Nabokov's multilingual childhood, is long gone. English, which I understand is one of the hardest for non-natives to learn, is now the lingua franca.

[John Whitworth]

I never use words that are not in the dictionary. You're just not looking into the right dictionary. Incidentally, is this a foreign language?

On Seein an Aik-Tree Sprent Wi Galls

In Aprile, at the licht o noon,
whan leean hauf-licht there was nane,
nae flichtie ferlie was to blame
for yon queer sicht: an aik in blume.

Ben ilka flure there bode a worm
in borrowed housie bien an warm;
to bigg its bield the twist was torn
and beauty browden'd it in turn.

My Makar! God wha made me dour
as ony aik, my worm is dear;
oh grant amang this warldis steir,
that I may florische in the sture.

The poet is Robert Garioch

[This message has been edited by John Whitworth (edited September 11, 2008).]

[R. S. Gwynn]

John, the answer is, frankly, yes. I can appreciate the meter and the general drift, but the language is about as far from me as Chaucer's. What about this one, one of my all-time favorites of kiddy-verse? Would you need footnotes?

Little Brown Baby

Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes,
Come to yo' pappy an' set on his knee.
What you been doin', suh- makin' san' pies?
Look at dat bib - you's es du'ty ez me.
Look at dat mouf - dat's merlasses, I bet;
Come hyeah, Maria, an' wipe off his han's.
Bees gwine to ketch you an' eat you up yit,
Bein' so sticky an sweet - goodness lan's!

Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes,
Who's pappy's darlin' an' who's pappy's chile?
Who is it all de day nevah once tries
Fu' to be cross, er once loses dat smile?
Whah did you git dem teef? My, you's a scamp!
Whah did dat dimple come f'om in yo' chin?
Pappy do' know you - I b'lieves you's a tramp;
Mammy, dis hyeah's some ol' straggler got in!

Let's th'ow him outen de do' in de san',
We do' want stragglers a-layin' 'roun' hyeah;
Let's gin him 'way to de big buggah-man;
I know he's hidin' erroun' hyeah right neah.
Buggah-man, buggah-man, come in de do',
Hyeah's a bad boy you kin have fu' to eat.
Mammy an' pappy do' want him no mo',
Swaller him down f'om his haid to his feet!

Dah, now, I t'ought dat you'd hug me up close.
Go back, ol' buggah, you sha'n't have dis boy.
He ain't no tramp, ner no straggler, of co'se;
He's pappy's pa'dner an' play-mate an' joy.
Come to you' pallet now -- go to yo' res';
Wisht you could allus know ease an' cleah skies;
Wisht you could stay jes' a chile on my breas'--
Little brown baby wif spa'klin' eyes!

Paul Laurence Dunbar