A Little History of Poetry

  

This little history of poetry is Western-centric and overwhelmingly white: putting an image of Maya Angelou on the cover does not compensate for the clear bias of its contents.

Ezra Pound recognized the importance of Chinese poetry and Edward Fitzgerald, in a typically Victorian mode, the Persian. Translation remains perennially the problem, but I can recommend three books that will help to globalize your reach:

Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology, tr. David Hinton.

Faces of Love: Hafez and the Poets of Shiraz, tr. Dick Davis.

Arabian Love Poems: Full Arabic and English texts, tr. Bassam K. Frangieh. This collection features only a single poet, Nizar Kabbani, so it only gives a taste of the Arabic poetic tradition that stretches back into the pre-Islamic oral performances that left their imprint on the Qur’an and remain vital to this day. Even so, a taste is a taste.

I have had the great pleasure of meeting both Hinton and Davis who are superb translators; Frangieh is a well-known translator of modern Arabic poetry.

India is another great source of poetry (I guess Tagore made the cut because of Yeats?). It’s difficult to know where to begin there. Linda Hess’s translations of Kabir (a favorite of Robert Bly’s) wouldn’t be a bad place to start. Here’s a sample:

Three men went on pilgrimage,

jumpy minds and thieving hearts.

Not one sin was taken away;

they piled up nine tons more.

(#214 in The Bijak of Kabir).  

There’s a big world of poetry out there. It’s inexhaustible, but with some effort one can at least gild the darkness.