http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/10/oskar-pastior/ A blog from the Poetry Foundation where contemporary poets debate classic and contemporary poetry from America and around the world. Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:12:11 -0600 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.4 hourly 1 http://www.poetryfoundation.org/harriet/2007/10/oskar-pastior/#comment-1233 Michael Gushue Tue, 16 Oct 2007 17:50:52 +0000 http://pf/harriet/?p=446#comment-1233 "Isn't it remarkable that poetry composed primarily for the ear is finally the most untranslatable?" I guess that's what I would expect. You could argue that even an admirable effort like Zukofsky's Catullus only partially succeeds, which is to say, fails. Music is processed partially by different (and "older") parts of the brain than communicating through words. No studies that I know of, but I wouldn't be suprised if poetry, in whatever way it is like music, reaches those same areas of the brain. If you had a sensitive enough instrument you could use it as a test of poetry (maybe poets do). No surprise that it does not carry across then. On another note, you should check out librivox.org, which has audio files of multilingual poetry that you can download for free. Since everything on the site is in the public domain, the poems are probably old chesnuts, but still very interesting for the sound. “Isn’t it remarkable that poetry composed primarily for the ear is finally the most untranslatable?”
I guess that’s what I would expect.
You could argue that even an admirable effort like Zukofsky’s Catullus only partially succeeds, which is to say, fails. Music is processed partially by different (and “older”) parts of the brain than communicating through words. No studies that I know of, but I wouldn’t be suprised if poetry, in whatever way it is like music, reaches those same areas of the brain. If you had a sensitive enough instrument you could use it as a test of poetry (maybe poets do). No surprise that it does not carry across then.
On another note, you should check out librivox.org, which has audio files of multilingual poetry that you can download for free. Since everything on the site is in the public domain, the poems are probably old chesnuts, but still very interesting for the sound.

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