Never having studied poetry properly, I have not been following this thread, but this last week on R4's 'Today' programme, thre has been a poem a day because of some event. I heard too and thought they were pretentious rubbish. However, I would most certainly defer to an intelligent opinion! Did anyone here hear them I wonder?

It seems that they've been doing a series on the Eliot prize nominees -- http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/today/listener_editors/tseliotprize2007.shtml. All very dull poems & poets (imo).

Susan, I'd be interested to know why you thought they were pretentious rubbish?

Hiere is translation of Khodasevich poem by Nabokov followed by literal translation of Khodasevich poem.

     Orpheus

    Brightly lit from above I am sitting
    in my circular room; this is I--
    looking up at a sky made of stucco,
    at a sixty-watt sun in that sky.

    All around me, and also lit brightly,
    all around me my furniture stands,
    chair and table and bed--and I wonder
    sitting there what to do with my hands.

    Frost-engendered white feathery palmtrees
    on the window-panes silently bloom;
    loud and quick clicks the watch in my pocket
    as I sit in my circular room.

    Oh, the leaden, the beggarly bareness
    of a life where no issue I see!
    Whom on earth could I tell how I pity
    my own self and the things around me?

    And then clasping my knees I start slowly
    to sway backwards and forwards, and soon
    I am speaking in verse, I am crooning
    to myself as I sway in a swoon.

    What a vague, what a passionate murmur
    lacking any intelligent plan;
    but a sound may be truer than reason
    and a word may be stronger than man.

    And then melody, melody, melody
    blends my accents and joins in their quest
    and a delicate, delicate, delicate
    pointed blade seems to enter my breast.

    High above my own spirit I tower,
    high above mortal matter I grow:
    subterranean flames lick my ankles,
    past my brow the cool galaxies flow.

    With big eyes-as my singing grows wilder--
    with the eyes of a serpent maybe,
    I keep watching the helpless expression
    of the poor things that listen to me.

    And the room and the furniture slowly,
    slowly start in a circle to sail,
    and a great heavy lyre is from nowhere
    handed me by a ghost through the gale.

    And the sixty-watt sun has now vanished,
    and away the false heavens are blown:
    on the smoothness of glossy black boulders
    this is Orpheus standing alone.

Here, for comparison, is a literal translation of "Ballada" as made by David M. Bethea:4

    Ballada

    I sit, illumined from above,
    in my round room.
    I look into a plaster sky
    at a sixty-watt sun.

    Around me, illumined also,
    are chairs, and a table, and a bed.
    I sit, and in confusion have no idea
    what to do with my hands.

    Frozen white palms
    bloom noiselessly on the windowpanes.
    My watch with a metallic sound
    runs in my vest pocket.

    O, stale, beggared paltriness
    of my hopelessly closed life!
    Whom can I tell how much I pity
    myself and all these things?

    And, embracing my knees,
    I begin to rock,
    and all at once I begin in a daze
    to talk with myself in verse.

    Unconnected, passionate speeches!
    You can't understand them at all,
    but sounds are truer than sense
    and the word is strongest of all.

    And music, music, music
    threads its way into my singing
    and sharp, sharp, sharp
    is the blade that pierces me.

    I begin to outgrow myself,
    to rise above my dead being,
    with steps into the subterranean flame,
    with brow into the fleeting stars.

    And I see with great eyes--
    the eyes, perhaps, of a snake--
    how to my wild song [now] harken
    my wretched things.

    And in a flowing, revolving dance
    my entire room moves rhythmically,
    and someone hands me
    a heavy lyre through the wind.

    And the plaster sky
    and the sixty-watt sun are no more:
    onto the smooth, black boulders
    it is Orpheus planting his feet.

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
no one, not even the rain, has such small hands


ee cummings

Didn't know that one; great, incantatory language.

The word escapes me too, Antheil. I'm sure it'll come back to us ...

'Lightning', surely, though? It doesn't scan otherwise!

For a start, I'm an ignoramus except in more familiar stuff and the reasonably wide range of poems for children that I used when I was a teacher; Michael Rosen's for instance. But also because both were read in that sort of gloomy monotone so often chosen by readers and neither (don't know which ones they were) made any sense to me whatever. Perhaps one needs to listen several times, but I think maybe the choices to be read on such a programme as 'Today' should have had more direct appeal.

Actually, the thought has just occurred to me that I ought to see if there is a poetry appreciation course of some sort going on in this area...