tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post233405066855200069..comments2024-03-28T19:17:01.550+13:00Comments on The Imaginary Museum: Finds: Thoroughly MuntedDr Jack Rosshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01805945600952222957noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29676463.post-24186773765873387002011-07-31T00:26:25.479+12:002011-07-31T00:26:25.479+12:00Jack you're addicted! If I go to town I head f...Jack you're addicted! If I go to town I head for book shops. I pass clothes shops - every kind of shop (except coffee places but I prefer Starbucks where I have Chocolate in preference to coffee) - but I will stop at any kind of book shop (or library) and I am always getting books form the library. It is an obsession with me... (And it is potentially almost any subject.) In the winter my son and I go to the Panmure library (it is as it is warm most days and then we walk after we have had lunch) and not only do I get the books thrown out from my local library but I restlessly prowl looking for books on almost any subject or genre...I move from he 000s to well any decimal number...and I am not looking to re sell (necessarily) I seem to have a hunger for knowledge (or is it just books?) on a big range of subjects...books and knowledge I<br /> can never know...<br /><br />I recently got a book of essays by Koestler but his essay on the Fischer-Spassky match wasn't very well informed (it had its moments)...very sketchy<br /><br />He was a hack (more or less) ... but that may have just been a pot boiler ... <br /><br />'Alcools' I couldn't get into but I cant read French perhaps that is problem. 'Calligrames' are interesting.<br /><br />Of the French I liked poetry by Hugo (again in translation), I tried a bilingual of Verlaine but it didn't seem much to me... Valery seemed just to write too much, Rimbaud of some of his works is good, Celan I find too baffling but (apart from Guillevic & Rilke (very mixed times I know)) Trakl is the major European poet for me. Transtromer also. <br /><br />Of course there is Baudelaire's "Fleurs du Mal" and the prose poems of say Mallarme and Jacob. <br /><br />I haven't yet got into those I Italian poets. Most of the Spanish or South American poets I just cant keep my head on (I rarely sell poetry of my own but I got rid of Neruda)...Eliot seems to do so much more than most of them with a few lines. <br /><br />However there are many great prose writers from those countries.<br /><br />Pushkin I enjoyed a lot and Milosz but not Herbert or in Russia Mayakovksy or (very different) Celan...but there are many poets I do like...probably hard if one only really has one language as I do...<br />Handke's plays I enjoyed immensely and so on.<br /><br />But it is good to get close to the original as you have found.<br /><br />Perhaps I will get around to looking again at some of those poet I don't seem to lie so much.<br /><br />Also in Scandinavia 'Brand' and 'Peer Gynt' of Ibsen..but also 'When we Dead Awaken'...these are like strange and wonderful poems.<br />The prose of Miller is extraordinary and he talks about Strindberg and Rimbaud...his prose is like the poetry of an intense kind like the best of Rimbaud.<br /><br />Like immense poetry is Thomas Wolfe's huge, torrential, passionate books...I read two of his books this year..came to about 1400 pages in total!! He for me is (or was) incredible. Sadly he died relatively young at 38.Richardhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10272507198753290435noreply@blogger.com