Peter McDonald
@pmcdthisandthat.bsky.social
Poet, translator, critic, editor.
www.the-tls.com/classics/cro... My review of Emily Wilson and Henry Power in the new TLS.
Englished Homer
“It is probable”, Alexander Pope wrote in his translation of the Iliad (1715–20), “the author’s own words, at the time he used them, never meant half so
the-tls.com
Emily Wilson’s Odyssey: so good she’s doing it twice. (From Prospect magazine.) I do wish Alexander Pope was alive to do this stuff justice…
www.carcanet.co.uk/978178410176... Ten years old now, but if this is indeed going to be a Homeric summer, a few people might be interested in tracking it down now. The material is odd, yes; but I do hope (he says modestly) this is the best translation available. (Well sort of available...)
The Homeric Hymns
A 2016 Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation The Homeric Hymns are a crucial work in the Western literary canon, and Peter McDonald’s new verse tran...
carcanet.co.uk
www.carcanet.co.uk/978178410176... Ten years old now, but if this is indeed going to be a Homeric summer, a few people might be interested in tracking it down now. The material is odd, yes; but I do hope (he says modestly) this is the best translation available. (Well sort of available...)
The Homeric Hymns
A 2016 Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation The Homeric Hymns are a crucial work in the Western literary canon, and Peter McDonald’s new verse tran...
carcanet.co.uk
There’s a Michael Longley poem for most situations, isn’t there? (From The Slain Birds, 2022)
A reason for keeping silent I think it better that at times like these We poets keep our mouths shut; for in truth We have no gift to set a statesman right; He’s 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. WBY b.13 Jun 1865
One had a lovely face And two or three had charm But face and charm were in vain I could not change for the grass Cannot but keep the form Where the mountain hare has lain. WB Yeats, earliest surviving text of ‘Memory’ (published 1916).
Feeling some “righteous anger” myself today on hearing the obscenities spewing from JD Vance’s mouth. Here is a soldier from the Sikh Regiment, at the liberation of Italy. They fought and died with us in North Africa too, and all through the War. Decent folk remember.
youtu.be/aZuQbZv0OQs As long as a feature film, but you never know, might interest some folk. Now imagine doing this for every poem WBY ever wrote …
"September 1913" (with Peter McDonald)
YouTube video by DrRobDoggett
youtu.be
This weather had better improve, is all I’m saying. (Louis MacNeice said it better: from The Burning Perch (1963))
F.T. Prince (from “Senilia” in his 1993 Collected Poems)
A.E. Housman, on the hilarious folly of classical metre in English. (Not that anyone actually thinks about this stuff any more. Still…)
www.qub.ac.uk/schools/seam... June 2027: this will be a wonderful event - come to Belfast and participate!
Michael Longley Conference - 2027 | Seamus Heaney Centre | Queen's University Belfast
qub.ac.uk
When one takes to oneself a French mistress, it’s important to make sure your Japanese valet vets the candidates.
Happy St Patrick’s Day to all! Ben Bulben, seen from Glencar.
In a time of war: written 1992, from my book Adam’s Dream (1996).
The crooked ways of literary history. I’m the baby (take that how you will). From my book Torchlight (2011).
This is what happens when you let WB Yeats go to the country and play with Ezra Pound. Awkward.
Lucinda Williams in London tonight: majestic, magnificent.
www.the-tls.com/lives/letter... Or, when the poetry stopped (and the peke’s eye popped).
The exasperated spirit
During the Second World War, Shamley Wood House in Surrey was a place of refuge for T. S. Eliot. The poet worked in Faber’s Russell Square offices for part of each week, fire-watching by night, and re...
the-tls.com
Ezra Pound, 1913. “Beautiful” last-gasping, but on life support from “ugly”.
Not just timely by any means, but timely all the same: John Jay Chapman (1862-1933) on “The President’s Dictatorship”. As quoted in Christopher Ricks’s splendid chapter on Chapman in his book Along Heroic Lines (2021).
