Arnaut Daniel, image taken from wikipedia
The 12th century minstrel Arnaut Daniel (born in what is now Dordogne, France) has had a cult following that goes from Dante to Petrarch and from Ezra Pound to T.S. Eliot. A student of Latin turned into a poet / singer, this passionate troubadour could be as sensual and arrogant as complex and obscure.
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, image taken from Wikipedia
Two writers that I have discovered “recently” (meaning a couple of years ago) are the Texan writer William Goyen and the English writer Margaret Cavendish (1623-1673), the Duchess of Newcastle. I became a fan of both writers immediately, and having written an entry on William Goyen I thought I should do the same for the Duchess. I don’t think Cavendish is for “everybody” (I would recommend reading Goyen to just anybody, but not the Duchess), as some parts of her writings can be rather dense and/or wearisome. Despite this, she blew my mind away.
A couple of additions to my previous post on concrete poetry.
1) The influence of Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) on e.e cummings is obvious in the poem “l(a”
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
when compared to this haiku by Basho:
Won’t you come and see
loneliness? Just one leaf
from the kiri tree.
2) Rather arbitrarily, these short poems on solitude and withdrawal remind me of the song “In McDonalds” from the dubstep master, Burial.
Lyrics:
(woman) Cause once upon a time, it was you I adored.
I could smile…
‘Cause once upon a time, it was you I adored.
[Man]
You look different.
tudo está dito (1974), by Augusto de Campos. Image taken from his website
Though the dadaists and surrealists had already made extensive use of visual poetry, it was in the 1950s when a group of Brazilians decided to take it a step further and create a new movement. Thus concrete poetry was born.
Heart Crown and Mirror, by Guillaume Apollinaire (image taken from ubuweb)
Forming shapes with words or sentences has been an old practice (it can already be seen during the Classical Greek period) that was taken to new heights during the 20th century.
Powered by WordPress