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I am posting this as a benchmark, not because I think I'm playing very well yet.  The idea would be post a video every month for a ye...

Tuesday, September 7, 2021

Noah

 When they told me as a kid Noah walked with God

I took it literally; I saw them in my mind's eye 

taking a walk together. 

If only belief were that

11 comments:

Leslie B. said...

I'd like it. Also, this is a good poem.

OT speaking of good/bad poetry and flamenco, I cannot believe I did not know about this individual. https://www.fernandovalverde.com/es/home/

One is supposed to like him so naturally I am repelled. But. For the corpus.

Jonathan said...

God, what a poet he is. I'm not surprised Zapata and García Montero praise him.

Leslie B. said...

OK, I will give him a chance. I've found out he lives in the US. I discovered him via a Carolyn Forché translation of a book called AMERICA that at first glance seemed derivative / stale / fake and I said bleah, another poem about the American earth, this time written from Granada, give us a break! ;-)

Jonathan said...

I was being sarcastic. He is total crap.

Leslie B. said...

Ha! I shouldn't comment while at work, because there I am so used to being quiet at preposterous proposals. So: G-M is the colega granadino I also have not read, and Z must be MAZ in NY. My question remains: how do such people get ahead? Because he's worse in Spanish than in English, as I have now verified. Yet get ahead he has done.

Jonathan said...

Like Zapata, being in the US can help in some cases. You can recruit naive Hispanists. Or LGM has brought the bar so low for Spanish poetry for an entire two generations. Also, people read Mary Oliver with pleasure; it shouldn't be surprising now to have a young, good-looking guy come in and do this sort of thing.

Leslie B. said...

Well he was good looking when younger in the way all the student-aged types are. Now moving on toward awkward middle age--his photographs are increasingly posed, affected, and so on. I think what it is is that he so carefully cultivates an image of healthy social and family life. People want it. https://www.fernandovalverde.com/es/galeria/ And then his poetry evinces standard sensitivity, in the Mary Oliver way, yes.

Interesting about LGM bringing the bar this low for this long.

Leslie B. said...

P.S. I have now inspected García Montero. He's even worse!!!

Jonathan said...

You know I used to be well-known for trashing García Montero, before I got into the Lorca thing.

Jonathan said...

https://www.jstor.org/stable/474587?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

Leslie B. said...

Oh, good. Excellent.