How do I actually into poetry, especially epic poetry?
Start with the Greeks
>>25328936It's really not that hard. Just pick one and read it. Fuck sakes.
>>25328936remember that a prose translation is not an epic poem. if the original had been prose, we would have forgotten it by now.
>>25328936>How do I actually into poetryFind a poem.Read it.>especially epic poetry?Find an epic poem.Read it.
>>25328936Just fucking read it, Christ. You people can't do anything>but but but the references and the allusions and You're allowed to reread it>but but but what if I don't get it becauseYou're allowed to reread it>but but but edition and translation andReading a shit edition or bad translation is better than owning the best edition and not reading it
Read all myths, start with Pyramid Texts and Mesopotamian stuff.Eventually you'll become a channel of such words just as a child who learns his father's tongue, and then you might become like one of them.
Just read the poem, I don't understand SHIT about the Divine Comedy but I'm enjoying the prose and imagery
>>25328936many people start with poopetry
>>25329984like De Sade
>>25328936Maybe read a prose and verse translation concurrently. The prose will elucidate the difficult parts of the verse.
>>25328936Like everyone else has said, this sort of paralysis regarding going about literary progress 'the right way' is unproductive and at worst immobilizes getting into poetry. Google a list of famous poets (or get an anthology), read a smattering of poems by different people, find out who you like and read more of their stuff and search for more poets like them. Never be afraid to take your time with even just a single brief lyric poem, take your time to absorb it, suck all the marrow out of the verses.Afraid you won't get the allusions or won't get it? You can always reread the poem at a later date where, one way or another, you will get something new out of it. You wouldn't let not getting a reference in a Family Guy episode stop you from ever watching a Television show, right?Afraid you'll read a so-called wrong translation? Chances are good that any translation put out by a major publishing house will be far from erroneous, even if people disagree with particular choices. But if the idea of potentially reading a "bad translation" gives you an anxiety attack, feel free to stick to your native tongue and you'll still have a great deal to work with.I hope this helps you, poetry really is a beautiful thing for the soul, in my view it's one of the greatest jewels in any culture's crown.
>>25329208untrue. THEY’D have forgotten it (if it was from an oral tradition), poems easier to memorise.
>>25330526>poems easier to memorise.that does not contradict the claim i made. epics have a staying power because they stick in the minds of their readers, which is why they continued to be authored even after the invention of writing. you read "the rime of the ancient mariner" once, and you come away with passages completely memorized. if the story had been told in prose, the mariner would be robbed of his strange power of speech.
>>25328936start with das nibelungenlied
>>25330697the point is: modern audiences are more sharp-witted and easily bored; and since the printing press has (almost) abolished illiteracy in the west, novels or histories need no longer be clothed in regular metre to make them easily memorised; nor do english versions of the iliad (etc).
>>25328936With a verb.
>>25330732lol, we've had this conversation before, i think. you're dead wrong, which is why you barely addressed what i said. the modern audience would not like rime of the ancient mariner just as well of if it were prose. they are not too smart for poems. when edmund spenser wrote the faerie queene, he wasn't using rhyme/meter because he was illiterate or because he was trying to reach an illiterate audience. he used them because to do so is very obviously impressive in a way that prose will never be, and because the ability of things written in rhyme and meter stick in the memory more readily, no matter how literate you are. these qualities are timeless.
Sisters, I've read Rime, Kubla Khan, and going through The Divine Comedy, what else should I read?
>>25330942The Dynasts by HardyPrometheus on His Crag by HughesOrpheus by CrowleyThe Faerie Queene by SpenserThe Revolt of Islam by ShelleyChapman's Iliad and OdysseyDryden's AeneidThe Canterbury TalesJust don't fucking read The Prelude, it's embarrassing.
>>25330857>we've had this conversation beforenot ringing any bells. first and foremost i’d push back on all these later examples of epic poetry. epic belongs to early man. t.e. lawrence said even the ‘homer’ who wrote the odyssey (who modern academia can guess lived at least 200 years later than the iliad poet) ‘lived too long after the heroic age to feel assured and large.' but also it should go without saying if the original was readable, the translation must be so also, or however good it may be as a construe, it is not a translation.
>>25332086i'm not willing to believe that there are two idiots of this sort out there.>epic belongs to early man.this is your definition and no one elses. a protracted narrative poem spaning multiple cantos is an epic. a shorter narrative poem spanning multiple pages is called a minor epic. if you go about telling people that paradise lost and the divine comedy are not epics, you out yourself as a fool. plain and simple.> t.e. lawrence said even the ‘homer’ who wrote the odyssey ‘lived too long after the heroic age to feel assured and large.'this does not state or imply that the oddessy is not an epic.>if the original was readable, the translation must be so alsoyou're just admitting that the problem is your personal skill issue. i can read dryden, pope, chapman, mickle, fairfax, etc. therefore, their translation are readable, even if not by you.what really ought to go without saying is that if the oringinal is a POEM, the translation must also be a POEM.
Must we do this in every thread on every board
>>25332219there are at least two i’m afraid since it’s a direct quote from robert graves.>this does not state or imply that the oddessy is not an epic.i should add that ‘epic belongs to earlyman’ is also a quote of his.>dryden, popewrote in english. why you’re including translators in that list is beyond me. regardless: a good translator aims fearlessly at making a dead author living to a generation other than his own. if they can give it a new lease of life (eg by using a staid but simple english) it can allow readers to encounter (say) homer as he was meant to be.samuel butler said 'it takes two people to say a thing - a sayee as well as a sayer - and by parity of reasoning a poem's original audience and environment are integral parts of the poem itself.' they blend into one another. change either, and some corresponding change will be necessary in the other, if the original harmony between them is to be preserved.
>>25332276all of those people i listed are translators. i was listing some of those who have made readable translations.i can see why you have a hard time reading them. you simply are not very bright.
>>25332285clearly. it takes all sorts to make a world, it’d pay to remember that, we can’t all be of this calibre>if the oringinal[sic] is a POEM, the translation must also be a POEM.
>>25332295ah, pointing out a slight typo. a masterful play.
>>25332276>marge it takes two people to lie>one to lie and one to listen
>>25332304the typo was a convenient jibe. i was pointing to the pedestrian simpleton 1:1 idea of it (expressed with caps, for effect) as well as the a priori assumption that poetry is even capable of being translated (something you’ll see pushed back against should you venture into secondary reading)
>>25332312you are not in any posistion to call anyone a simpleton after admitting that the poetic translations are unreadable to you. (protip: the "ſ" makes an "s" sound)
Two anons; a duelA futile word battleWho wins, we all lose
How the fuck is anyone already arguing in this thread
>>25329971based. when you read the aenied, it will fill in some gaps.
>>25328936Start with the Greek's epic poetry written in Dactyllic meterNotice how rythmic reverberant triads of "Dum - da - da", like drums Warlike and valiant steering the intellect upwards at the gods
>>25329442That's not really true, though. A lot of things can escape your notice. a LOT of things.
>>25332578Actually nothing escapes my notice but I'm built different
>>25328936you read it, generally speaking
>>25329971you can really stop after The Inferno, the rest really isn't as good>>25332500I'm about half way through it, and it feels like I finally got to "the good part". Still like The Odyssey and The Illiad better.
>>25332432impotent reply, but i’ll humour you. translations are made for the general, non-classical public, their main consideration is what will be immediately intelligible, and therefore readable, and what will not. (protip: it’s spelt odyssey not ‘oddessy’.)
>>25332658Pleb
Bro really said what if don't get it LMAO
>>25332882
>>25333888what is blud yapping about
