rivulets
Feeling I was too cavalier and quick to dismiss Bonvicino yesterday. Typical dumb American, unwilling to open to another language – that was part of it. Also, the thought of wondering why am I reading poetry. What am I looking for? Entertainment? Learning opportunities? New Ways? New Worlds? New language rivulets eroding the mind? Mastery? Power? Love?
Translation is important. Here’s another link in the tradition of oddly limited links about poetics:
Programs: Conversations on Poetics There is one conversation. It is from May 30, 2002. It says translation is important. I agree. My language skills are limited, however. If I was an editor, I would definitely want to include some translation in my journal, but my skill in judging the quality of the translation would be weak.
Allusion – the Internet has made a large difference in coping with obscure allusions in poetry. A few keystrokes, and I can find out who Nolde is. I’m not sure how he functions in the poem. But I know he belonged to the Der Blaue Reiter group, and painted “Unpainted Pictures” – watercolors that he secretly stashed after being forbidden to paint by the Nazis. And he had an intense preoccupation with flowers.
Nolde often seems to carve out a crude, primitive icon for his subject — a peasant drawing of a person or religious figure — then to pour into it a raw brew of expressionist color, in the way Frankenstein filled his monster with lightning.
handprint : emil nolde by Bruce MacEvoy
(Note: handprint is an interesting site, with a section on Wittgenstein. I’ll have to browse around there some more.)
I don’t know how to wrap this up. This blogging, it’s fragmented and meandering. I feel like that is ecologically sound, but frowned upon in poetic and classic writing circles. Oh well, invention.
I know that myosotis is forget-me-not. I didn’t have to look that up, but I did anyway, just to check.