Interview

Interview

BY DOROTHY PARKER

The ladies men admire, I’ve heard,
Would shudder at a wicked word.
Their candle gives a single light;
They’d rather stay at home at night.
They do not keep awake till three,
Nor read erotic poetry.
They never sanction the impure,
Nor recognize an overture.
They shrink from powders and from paints …
So far, I’ve had no complaints.

Dorothy Parker, 1926. from The Portable Dorothy Parker, edited by Brendan Gill.

Dorothy Parker 1893–1967

Als einzige Frau gehörte sie der berühmten Gruppe der New Yorker Autoren an, die sich täglich am Stammtisch des Algonquin-Hotels trafen, um Geistesblitze und Tratsch auszutauschen. Ihr erster Gedichtband Enough Rope (1926) wurde zum Bestseller, der Auswahlband The Portable Dorothy Parker wird seit 1944 immer wieder aufgelegt.

The Author’s Apology for his Book

When at the first I took my Pen in hand
Thus for to write; I did not understand
That I at all should make a little Book
In such a mode; Nay, I had undertook
To make another, which, when almost done,
Before I was aware I this begun.

John Bunyan (1628-1688)

Anfang seines Buchs „The Pilgrim’s Progress“ (1678/84)

Chicago

Carl Sandburg
CHICAGO

 HOG Butcher for the World,
 Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,
 Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;
 Stormy, husky, brawling,
 City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I
 have seen your painted women under the gas lamps
 luring the farm boys.
 And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it
 is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to
 kill again.
 And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the
 faces of women and children I have seen the marks
 of wanton hunger.
 And having answered so I turn once more to those who
 sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
 and say to them:
 Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
 so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
 Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on
 job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the
 little soft cities;

Fierce as a dog with tongue lapping for action, cunning
 as a savage pitted against the wilderness,
 Bareheaded,
 Shoveling,
 Wrecking,
 Planning,
 Building, breaking, rebuilding,
 Under the smoke, dust all over his mouth, laughing with
 white teeth,
 Under the terrible burden of destiny laughing as a young
 man laughs,
 Laughing even as an ignorant fighter laughs who has
 never lost a battle,
 Bragging and laughing that under his wrist is the pulse.
 and under his ribs the heart of the people,
 Laughing!
 Laughing the stormy, husky, brawling laughter of
 Youth, half-naked, sweating, proud to be Hog
 Butcher, Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat, Player with
 Railroads and Freight Handler to the Nation.

From: Chicago Poems (1916)

ALONE

ALONE
by Edgar Allan Poe

From childhood’s hour I have not been
As others were; I have not seen
As others saw; I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I loved, I loved alone.
Then- in my childhood, in the dawn
Of a most stormy life- was drawn
From every depth of good and ill
The mystery which binds me still:
From the torrent, or the fountain,
From the red cliff of the mountain,
From the sun that round me rolled
In its autumn tint of gold,
From the lightning in the sky
As it passed me flying by,
From the thunder and the storm,
And the cloud that took the form
(When the rest of Heaven was blue)
Of a demon in my view.

Poetry

Marianne Moore

Poetry

I, too, dislike it.
 Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
 it, after all, a place for the genuine.

Fassung von 1967. Das Gedicht  wurde von ihr 27 mal in mindestens drei verschiedenen Fassungen veröffentlicht. Bein Erstdruck 1919 hat es fünf odenartig eingerückte Strophen, 1925 eine einzige Strophe  von 13 Zeilen.

Hier die erste Fassung, hier unter Nr. I die von 1925.

Auf Deutsch:

Marianne Moore: Kein Schwan so schön. Gedichte, übersetzt von Jürgen Brocan, Urs Engeler Editor. Basel; Weil am Rhein; Wien: Engeler, 2001, ISBN 3-905591-30-8.

 

A wise old owl

A wise old owl nursery rhyme

A wise old owl lived in an oak
The more he saw the less he spoke
The less he spoke the more he heard.
Why can’t we all be like that wise old bird?

Mehr

On being asked for a War Poem

30. On being asked for a War Poem

I THINK it better that in times like these
A poet keep his mouth shut, for in truth
We have no gift to set a statesman right;
He has had enough of meddling who can please
A young girl in the indolence of her youth,
Or an old man upon a winter’s night.

W.B. Yeats (1865–1939). The Wild Swans at Coole. 1919.

Schließt eure Türen nicht

Walt Whitman

SCHLIESST EURE TÜREN NICHT

Schließt eure Türen nicht vor mir, stolze Bibliotheken,
Denn was in all euren Fächern, voll wie sie sind, fehlte und doch am meisten not tut, bringe ich,
Aus dem Krieg heraus, der anhebt, hab ich ein Buch gemacht,
Nichts die Worte, alles in meinem Buch die Bahn,
Ein besonderes Buch, abseits vom Rest und nicht vom Verstand erfaßt,
Doch ihr, sprachlose Abgründe ihr, werdet jegliche Seite durchdringen.

Aus:

WALT WHITMAN:
GESÄNGE UND INSCHRIFTEN
ÜBERTRAGEN VON GUSTAV LANDAUER
KURT WOLFF VERLAG MÜNCHEN
1921

Schließt nicht eure Türen

Schließt eure Türen nicht vor mir, ihr stolzen Bibliotheken!
Denn was auf all euren wohlgefüllten Regalen fehlt und am
meisten not tut, das bringe ich.
Aus dem Kriege auftauchend hab ich ein Buch geschrieben,
Die Worte meines Buches gar nichts, der Trieb darin alles,
Ein Buch für sich, nicht mit den andern verknüpft, noch mit
dem Verstand zu erfassen.
Doch das Geheime, Unausgesprochene wird auf jeder Seite
zittern.

Aus: Grashalme. In Auswahl aus dem Englischen übertragen u. mit Einleitung von Wilhelm Schölermann. Leipzig: Diederichs, 1904, S. 33.

SHUT NOT YOUR DOORS TO ME PROUD LIBRARIES.

SHUT not your doors to me, proud libraries,
For that which was lacking among you all, yet needed
most, I bring;
A book I have made for your dear sake, O soldiers,
And for you, O soul of man, and you, love of comrades;
The words of my book nothing, the life of it every-
thing;
A book separate, not link’d with the rest, nor felt by
the intellect;
But you will feel every word, O Libertad! arm’d
Libertad!
It shall pass by the intellect to swim the sea, the air,
With joy with you, O soul of man.

From: Drum-Taps (1865)

A Fox may steal your Hens, Sir

A Fox may steal your Hens, Sir,
A Whore your Health and Pence, Sir,
Your Daughter rob your Chest, Sir,
Your Wife may steal your Rest, Sir.
A Thief your Goods and Plate.
But this is all but picking,
With Rest, Pence, Chest and Chicken;
It ever was decreed, Sir,
If Lawyer’s Hand is fee’d, Sir,
He steals your whole Estate.

— John Gay (The Beggar’s Opera)

Oh come with old Khayyam…

Vielleicht antizyklisch in der Nähe des Frühlingsbeginns – aber stimmt ja trotzdem:

OH, come with old Khayyám, and leave the Wise
To talk; one thing is certain, that Life flies;
One thing is certain, and the Rest is Lies;
The Flower that once has blown for ever dies.

Omar Khayyam, in der Fassung von Edward FitzGeralds erster Ausgabe von 1859.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
[translated by Edward Fitzgerald] illustrated by Willy Pogany
London: George G. Harrap & Co. Limited, o.J. (ca. 1920) (Bound in Suede Leather)