death Archives - Page 2 of 2

Reading: La fausse morte by Paul Valéry

Paul Valéry (1971-1945) I found a short poem in a remarkable translation by Nathaniel Rudavsky-Brody: The Faux Death Humble, tender, against the charming tomb, ______Unfeeling monument That out of shadows, leavings, offered love ______Conjures your weary grace, I fall, dying against you, dying — Yet, No sooner fallen across the low grave Whose lawn littered ...

29 November, 2017

anthology, death, love, Paul Valéry

Poetry

Reading: The drowned woman by Ted Hughes

Ted Hughes (1930-1998). British giant of poetry. Married twice with ladies who committed suicide, then a third time to live a quiet rural life until his death from cancer. Very prolific. Today I want to read this poem about a drowned woman, published 1957, six years before Plath's suicide at age thirty, which charges it ...

27 November, 2017

anthology, death, Plath, Ted Hughes, woman

Poetry

Reading: Beautiful Youth by Gottfried Benn

German poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) supported Hitler when he came to power, but changed his mind after the 'night of the long knives'. Still, he was naive enough to join the Wehrmacht, where some officers respected his disaproval of the regime. I don't care too much about the details, but it wasn't pretty. The nazis, ...

21 November, 2017

anthology, death, Gottfried Benn, youth

Poetry

Reading: Do not go gentle… by Dylan Thomas

Today a poem that people like myself can't hear anymore, so often has it been repeated and analysed. Dylan Thomas (1914-1953) wrote this for his ailing father. I found a formal analysis online, that is devoid of passion and reminded me why I am doing this. Poetry gets so boring if you must interfere with ...

15 November, 2017

anthology, death, Dylan Thomas

Poetry

Reading: Yet to die. Unalone still by Osip Mandelstam

Here is a pretty translation I found of a poem by Osip Mandelstam (1891 - 1938), one of Russia's acclaimed anti-formalist (Acmeist) poets along with Akhmatova, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva. This was written in 1937: Yet to die. Unalone still. For now your pauper-friend is with you. Together you delight in the grandeur of the plains, And ...

4 November, 2017

anthology, death, Mandelstam, poverty

Poetry

Reading: To Death by Anna Akhmatova

Today I read fragment number 8 from the cycle 'Prologue', called 'To death' by one of the most famous Russian poets of the twentieth century, Anna Akmatova (1889-1966) in a translation by A.S. Kline . Translations of a lot of other Akhmatova poetry is also available on his website. To Death You’ll come regardless – ...

29 October, 2017

Akhmatova, anthology, death, Russia

Poetry

Great was that chase with the hounds for the unattainable meaning of the world. And now I am ready to keep running When the sun rises beyond the borderlands of death. - Czesław Miłosz

Reading: I hear that the axe has flowered by Paul Celan

Today, let's dive into a mysterious poem by the great Paul Celan, in a translation by Michael Hamburger. I hear that the axe has flowered I hear that the axe has flowered, I hear that the place can't be named, I hear that the bread which looks at him heals the hanged man, the bread ...

14 October, 2017

anthology, death, Paul Celan

Poetry

Reading: L’Orangerie by Yves Bonnefoy

The French poet Yves Bonnefoy (1923-2016) published major collections of poetry throughout his livetime. He lived, and died, in Paris in 2016. Today, I read a poem headed 'L'Orangerie'. I didn't like the English translation by Galway Kinnell so I have improved it. As usual, here's the poem: THE ORANGERY Thus we walk on the ruins ...

3 October, 2017

anthology, death, finitude, Orangerie, salamander, Yves Bonnefoy

Poetry

real hypochondria

I created this illness together with histamines and B lymphocytes to you, I imagine the pain worse: you nod and I recoil I have no heavens to curse and shallow is the temptation of the soil

15 July, 2017

death, hypochondria, illness, pain

Poetry

The gizzard of Halcyon

The world is a forest we cheapskate light on the forest floor high above flies the body of the bird of cool. We fools look up to see if she's gone halcyon, junky of the cloudless skies deal me more words, I want to play. I want to prove I'm here I want the spirits ...

26 June, 2017

bird, calm, death, halcyon

Poetry

On people who live on in our dreams

I dreamt that the late British American public intellectual Christopher Hitchens was walking next to me. He was bald, like in the last months of his life when he underwent chemotherapy, but appeared in excellent health and was obviously not aware of his impending death. The image was so vivid that I could see the ...

29 April, 2017

death, dreaming, friendship, Hitchens, humanism, imagination, life

Essays, The good life

Miles Davis

Floating on the invisible surface of a sea I hear music playing on the coastline somewhere to my right. They are playing jazz. I know some time I was expected there but I move away from the shore towards the silent starless sky Everywhere on my left. The shore bends itself towards me. It gives ...

27 September, 2015

death, jazz, Miles Davis

Poetry