Foreigners

[abu nuwas]

i think it's always gonna be difficult to read poetry in other languages, and i am ambivalent about it. which doesn't mean i don't recognize the importance of non english poetry...

i keep nearly writing poems on immigration... it's an interesting subject for me, the influx of new "cultures".

As to poetry, Pablo Neruda regularly tops the list of favorites, though he wrote in Spanish. A lot depends upon the poet. It is said that Byron's popularity on the continent, results from his stories and themes being easily translatable. But the more important a part the rhymes and metres are, or the poetic devices like alliteration and assonance,
rather than the theme, the harder the translator's task.

With immigration, in London, one might have thought that it would have produced of itself a flowering of new corners in libraries, but no. We do have, though, of course many, many, many foreign novellists and playwrights and poets. In 2014, it is ''in'' to be a foreigner, and I am busy acquiring the robes to go with my username, which I shall now use.

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Every poet should read Boccaccio's Genealogy of the Gentile Gods for the sheer scope of its message and its continued relevance to writing almost 700 years after its conception.

Of course, Boccaccio brings me naturally to thoughts of Chaucer -- and Chaucer wrote in almost an entirely different language.

I have read that there is a possibility that Chaucer met Boccaccio. Presumably, intellectual property was less of a thing then.....

I curse my slow reading ability: I am still slowly getting through Nicholas Nickleby......though I love every page, perhaps too much.