Thomas Hood wrote:

Saffron wrote: I think I have the best S ever. My pick packs more S's in to my one pick than you can shake a stick at! I was 12 when Shel Silverstein's first volume of poetry, Where the Sidewalk Ends came out. I loved it! I bought it for my youngest brother (he was 4 that year) as a birthday gift and read it to him as often as he would let me.

Better than Shakespeare?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shel_Silverstein

Did any of your enthusiasm for poetry rub off on your brother?

So nice to know you are reading along, Tom. My brother loved the Shel Silverstein poems, but did not stick with poetry. He did get the book for his daughter, though.

Boy, Mary, you sure did S!

MaryLupin wrote:
–noun Rhetoric.
a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships or a Croesus for a rich man.

Origin:
1350–1400; < ML < Gk synekdoch, equiv. to syn- syn- + ekdoch act of receiving from another, equiv. to ek- ec- + -dochē, n. deriv. of déchesthai to receive

This sounds a bit like metonymy.

Metonymy
A figure of speech in which one word is substituted for another with which it is closely associated. For example, in the expression The pen is mightier than the sword, the word pen is used for "the written word," and sword is used for "military power."

Translations

I always wonder about translations of literature from one language to another. How hard it must be to capture the beauty and subtly of the original. I think this must be especially difficult when translating poetry. I few weeks ago I came across this collection of three translations of the same poem. I was amazed at the variation of interpretations of the Chinese poem by the three American poets. Each of the translations have a slightly different flavor.

Night on the Great River [three translations]
by Meng Hao-jan
Translated by Gary Snyder, Kenneth Rexroth and William Carlos Williams

(I)

Steering my little boat towards a misty islet,
I watch the sun descend while my sorrows grow:
In the vast night the sky hangs lower than the treetops,
But in the blue lake the moon is coming close.

[translated by William Carlos Williams]

(II)

Night on the Great River

We anchor the boat alongside a hazy island.
As the sun sets I am overwhelmed with nostalgia.
The plain stretches away without limit.
The sky is just above the tree tops.
The river flows quietly by.
The moon comes down amongst men.

[translated by Kenneth Rexroth]

(III)

Mooring on Chien-te River

The boat rocks at anchor by the misty island
Sunset, my loneliness comes again.
In these vast wilds the sky arches down to the trees.
In the clear river water, the moon draws near.

[translated by Gary Snyder]

The Couple By Tomas Transtromer

They turn the light off, and its white globe glows
an instant and then dissolves, like a tablet
in a glass of darkness. Then a rising.
The hotel walls shoot up into heaven’s darkness.

Their movements have grown softer, and they sleep,
but their most secret thoughts begin to meet
like two colors that meet and run together
on the wet paper in a schoolboy’s painting.

It is dark and silent. The city however has come nearer
tonight. With its windows turned off. Houses have come.
They stand packed and waiting very near,
a mob of people with blank faces.

Klage by Georg Trakl

Dreamless sleep - the dusky Eagles
nightlong rush about my head,
man's golden image drowned
in timeless icy tides. On jagged reefs
his purpling body. Dark
echoes sound above the seas.

Stormy sadness' sister, see
our lonely skiff sunk down
by starry skies:
the silent face of night.

Wonderful. We are still on T's. The new pulitzer prize winner Natasha Trethewey:

http://books.google.ca/books?id=ZHdNGRK ... =3#PPP1,M1

http://www.amazon.com/Native-Guard-Poem ... 0618604634

After Your Death

First, I emptied the closets of your clothes,
threw out the bowl of fruit, bruised
from your touch, left empty the jars

you bought for preserves. The next morning,
birds rustled the fruit trees, and later
when I twisted a ripe fig loose from its stem,

I found it half eaten, the other side
already rotting, or – like another I plucked
and split open – being taken from the inside:

a swarm of insects hollowing it. I’m too late,
again, another space emptied by loss.
Tomorrow, a bowl I have yet to fill.

an Oldie but a goodie

Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

I keep turning in late assignments...For "S", I'd go with Bill Shakespeare, of course, and my favorite sonnet of his, No.73.

That time of year thou mayest in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum'd with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.

This is so good that I feel let down by the last two lines of it.

"T": "To a Mouse on Turning her Up in Her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785," by Robert Burns.
My 11th grade English teacher played a recording of this for us, which inspired me to memorize it. She had no idea she ever did anything to reach me--sad. To this day, an exquisite torture is to have me recite this to you in an awful Scots brogue. This is the one that begins "Wee, sleekit, cowrin', tim'rous beastie,/O, what a panic's in thy breastie!" and also includes the famous "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft a-gley" (so much better in the Scots).