Wednesday, July 27, 2016

I have to get up from this chair now and go mow grass, before the temperature climbs to 90 and I risk killing myself. I tell you: it's been years since I've gotten so much use out of my summer clothes.

Anyway, as I procrastinate over this last cup of coffee, I'll mention a couple of things. First, my band Doughty Hill is playing music on Friday at Pastimes in Dover-Foxcroft, 6:30-9:30, should you be local and/or capable of transporting yourself across time and space.

Second, this is to those of you who responded with interest to a poetry-reading project: As you know, I am loath to post copyrighted poems on this blog without permission. It is not only illegal but also unfair to the copyright holder. As we did for Tu Fu, we would have work around that situation, either with our own hard copies or by using poems that are easily available on, say, the Poetry Foundation site.

In my opinion we've done just about all we can do with Tu Fu, and one respondent has suggested shifting to Rilke. We did read his Letters to a Young Poet together last year, but his poems are a whole different kettle of fish [I do love that phrase]. There is a translation issue, but Stephen Mitchell's The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke is a good version that is readily available.

Another option would be to consider individual Rilke poems that are already online. Each person involved could take turns leading the discussion of a chosen poem from the Poetry Foundation site. The poem leader could email me some opening commentary about his or her chosen poem. I would post it here, and then the comments section would be open for response. Personally, I like this idea because it takes me off the dais. How do the rest of you feel?

4 comments:

Carlene said...

I love the idea of each of us choosing a Rilke poem and leading the discussion! In order to not have repeats, perhaps (if this is the route we take) we could all choose one early on and post a "reading list" for the group?

And yes...it is hot. I just spent the whole damned day inside a school 2.5 hrs away with no a/c, in a professional development thing. Ye Gods.

I may head to the pool.

Tom said...

The Poetry Foundation site has surprisingly few Rilke poems. I have the Mitchell Selected Poems -- what do others have?

Alternately, would anyone be interested in reading the recently departed Geoffrey Hill?

Dawn Potter said...

Geoffrey Hill . . . anybody else interested in Hill? I don't own any of his books but am game to check them out. Tom, do you have a favorite? Anybody else care to weigh in?

Tom said...

I own an early New and Collected edition of Hill's poems that goes up to 1992, as well as a couple of his later volumes. I'd be most interested personally in reading from that earlier stage of his work--his first two books For the Unfallen and King Log have some wonderful stuff in them (if by "wonderful" you understand some poems grappling with the Holocaust and the War of the Roses! These might give folks a taste of Hill: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/48454 and https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems-and-poets/poems/detail/48462).

I'm still up for Rilke, though, if that's the consensus. I might need some suggestions, though, because I haven't read enough of him to know what to pick.