The Hatred of Poetry. By Ben Lerner. Farrar, Straus & Giroux; 86 pages; $12. Fitzcarraldo; £9.99.

POETRY has always occupied an ambivalent space in society. In the ancient world Plato banned poets from his ideal republic; today they have to navigate the “embarrassment or suspicion or anger” that follows when they admit to their profession in public. Ben Lerner understands this hatred: as a poet he has been on the receiving end of it, but also, more interestingly, he has felt it himself.

Long before he published his two acclaimed novels, “Leaving the Atocha Station” and “10:04”, Mr Lerner was known as a poet. Yet the biographical details that are woven into this short and spirited discussion suggest an uneasy relationship with the form. As a boy, charged with learning a poem, Mr Lerner tried to game the system by asking his librarian which was the shortest; later in life he confesses that he has never heard what Sir Philip Sidney described as “the planet-like music of poetry”, nor experienced the “trance-like state” widely said by critics to be induced by John Keats (“I’ve never seen any critic in a trance-like state,” he adds, not unfairly.)

Yet Mr Lerner does not see all this as a problem; indeed, he believes it to be central to the art form. Poets and non-poets alike hate poetry, he argues, because poetry will always fail to deliver on the transcendental demands people have invested in it. As a result they enjoy pronouncing upon the abstract powers and possibilities of poetry more than they actually like to sit down and read it. As Keats wrote in “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter.” Mr Lerner takes his cue from Keats, but is a little more frank when he describes “the fatal problem with poetry: poems”.

This inevitable sense of falling short is expressed in some of the best poetry ever written, he says, and he elaborates his point with energised discussions of Keats, Walt Whitman and Emily Dickinson. But it is also inadvertently present in some of the worst poetry ever written. “Alas! I am very sorry to say/That 90 lives have been taken away”, wrote William Topaz McGonagall, a Scottish poet, in a notoriously underwhelming response to the Tay Bridge disaster of 1879. “When called upon to memorialise a faulty bridge, McGonagall constructs another,” writes Mr Lerner, as he dissects McGonagall’s swirling metrical confusion with poetically informed glee across a number of pages.

But McGonagall’s literary ineptitude is well known, and Mr Lerner’s essay becomes most interesting when he ventures into more contemporary territory, attacking with polemic zeal what he sees as confused critical assaults on modern poetry: the belief in a “vague past the nostalgists can never quite pinpoint” when poetry could still unite everyone, or in a “capacity to transcend history” that often seems to rely on its poetic purveyors being “white men of a certain class”. The hatred of poetry, Mr Lerner shows, can suddenly and revealingly become a vehicle for bitter politics. Yet he also sees communal redemption in the strange bond people have with this ancient art form: if we constantly think poetry is an embarrassing failure, then that means that we still, somewhere, have faith that it can succeed.

http://tanvien.net/new_daily_poetry/9.html

MIRRORS AT 4 A.M.

You must come to them sideways
In rooms webbed in shadow,
Sneak a view of their emptiness
Without them catching
A glimpse of you in return.

The secret is,
Even the empty bed is a burden to them,
A pretense.
They are more themselves keeping
The company of a blank wall,
The company of time and eternity

Which, begging your pardon,
Cast no image
As they admire themselves in the mirror,
While you stand to the side
Pulling a hanky out
To wipe your brow surreptitiously.

Charles Simic: Sixty Poems

Gương, 4 giờ sáng

Bạn phải rón rén, me mé, tới đó (1)
Những căn phòng, đầy mạng nhện, trong bóng tối.
Lén nhìn 1 cú, cái vẻ trống trơn của chúng
Đừng để chúng lén "đợp" lại bạn
Cũng 1 cú! 

Niềm bí ẩn là,
Ngay cả cái giường trống trơn
Thì cũng là 1 gánh nặng cho chúng.
Một cái cớ.
Chúng thấy bình yên hơn
Cảm thấy chúng là chúng hơn
Khi có bạn quí cận kề
Là bức tường trần trụi
Là thời gian
Là vĩnh cửu 

Những thứ đó, xin lỗi bạn
Chúng đếch để bóng của chúng
Trên mặt gương
Khi chúng tự sướng 

Trong lúc bạn đứng né qua 1 bên
Rút chiếc khăn tay
Kín đáo lau lông mày

1.      with one side faced forward

<I had to walk sideways to get between the two towering piles of boxes>

Synonyms broadside, crabwise, edgeways [chiefly British] [net]

Chữ này - sideways - của tiếng anh hay quá, tiếng việt không có từ tương đương . Nó vừa có nghĩa là không đi thẳng đến trước mặt, chỉ đi bên mé, bên rìa, hoặc đi bằng ngõ vòng vo, lại vừa có nghĩa len lén .

K

Note: Bài thơ này, mới thấy trên Gió-O.
Nhớ là, không làm sao dịch được từ "sideways", bèn cầu cứu K.
Tks again.

Bản của Lý Ốc, theo Gấu, dịch ẩu quá, "as always": "to them" sao mà là "đến bên cạnh chúng";  nếu đã "lén" lau chân mày, thì cắt bỏ "một cách kín đáo"!

Thảo nào, ngay cả thi sĩ mà cũng thù ghét thơ!
Why?
Poets and non-poets alike hate poetry, he argues, because poetry will always fail to deliver on the transcendental demands people have invested in it. As a result they enjoy pronouncing upon the abstract powers and possibilities of poetry more than they actually like to sit down and read it. As Keats wrote in “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter.” Mr Lerner takes his cue from Keats, but is a little more frank when he describes “the fatal problem with poetry: poems”.
Đọc thơ tán gái/thơ ngồi bên ly cà phê nhớ bạn hiền thì thật là ngọt ngào/ Nhưng đếch đọc chúng, ngọt hơn nhiều!
Thơ luôn thất bại, không đáp trả những đòi hỏi siêu thoát mà người đọc đầu tư vào nó
Cái vấn nạn tàn khốc của thơ, chính là: những bài thơ!
http://www.gio-o.com/LyOcBR/LyOcBRTamGuongDich.htm

Những Tấm Gương Lúc 4 AM

Em hãy đi nép đến bên cạnh chúng
Những căn phòng trong in bóng sọc giăng,
Len lén nhìn vào cõi không gian trống trơn
Đừng để chúng bắt dính
Một ánh liếc nhìn của em dội lại.

Bí mật là,
Ngay cả chiếc giuờng trống cũng mang gánh nặng,
Một sự giả vờ.
Chúng vẫn còn đang tự gắn liền
Sự kết liên với bức tường phẳng tắp,
Mối thân quen cùng với thời gian và muôn năm
Mà, xin em,
Hãy lánh mặt
Khi chúng tự ái mộ mình trong gương;

Trong khi em đứng nép bên cạnh
Lấy ra chiếc khăn tay
Em lén lau nét chân mày một cách kín đáo.