Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Catullus 22, etc.

Happy New Year - the Year of the Drum!

I had thought about discontinuing this blog, but here it goes. I enjoyed this Youtube video on Catullus 22: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IwWkiX5xg0 . It begins and ends with the poem in Latin, with a detailed analysis in between. The Zukosfkys' version made more sense when I read it again after watching the video.

For '15 I've started reading another book of poetry,  Fitzgerald's translation of The Odyssey. Embarrassingly, I've never read the whole Odyssey. I used a line of Pound's as an excuse: he said no decent translation existed in English. Well, since I hope to finish my book on Wilson and Joyce by the end of 2016, it seemed like a good time to read some Homer to help me understand Ulysses.

I now have bookmarks in fifteen books of poetry: The Collected Poems of Ray Bradbury, which I may finish this year during a "science fiction week" I have planned this summer; a book of Chaucer; a bilingual Inferno which I hope to finish in May as the Dante Society at my high school finishes the Inferno; The Portable DanteThe Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson; The Collected Poems of Robert Frost; an iBook by Robert Herrick; The Odyssey; a volume of Irish poetry; The Collected Poems of Patrick Kavanagh (the poet Desmond Egan told me "to do myself a favor" and buy this book thirty years ago); From Totems to Hip-Hop edited by Ishmael Reed; The Faerie Queen by Spenser; The Collected Poems of William Carlos Williams (as I make my chronological trek through film history, I read his poems for each year - I plan to read his 1954 poems this month, and I plan to finish the book when I reach 1962 later this year); "A" (I just finished my annual read through - I may work on "A"-24 and/or the index Zukofsky compiled between now and December); and the Complete Short Poetry by Zukofsky, which includes Louis and Celia's versions of Catullus.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Mr Wagner,

    Sorry this doesn't have much relevance to your blog but I couldn't think of a better way to contact you. I need some assistance:

    I was wondering if you know, as a modern authority, of a university or college that has any sort of Robert Anton Wilson archive or of any academic scholarship about the author or his work. I'm interested in writing my graduate thesis on Wilson and his work, hopefully in the light of modern magic or as a figure in American literature, and am looking for an academic environment that would be conducive to my work.

    Any advice, hints, or threads I can follow would be greatly appreciated.

    Kallisti,

    Gregory (gregoryarnott@gmail.com)

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