Annotated Poetry
November 22, 2011 7:26 PM Subscribe
Poetry Majors, are there any poets who annotate their poetry?
I find it somewhat frustrating when I don't know what or whom a poet referencing. It's intriguing to Google it, but it disturbs the flow of my reading.
I find it somewhat frustrating when I don't know what or whom a poet referencing. It's intriguing to Google it, but it disturbs the flow of my reading.
At the back of the collection of his poems From Wood to Ridge that he translated himself from the original Gaelic, Sorley MacLean does give various notes, mostly to explain references to Gaelic history and tradition that would be obscure to his English audience.
posted by Abiezer at 7:34 PM on November 22, 2011
posted by Abiezer at 7:34 PM on November 22, 2011
D.A. Powell's Tea has footnotes for some of its more obscure references. If you check "look inside this book," and scroll near the end, there's a nice selection of them. Everything from disco hits to Shakespeare.
(as a related aside, I assumed he was lying about "Angel's Flight" being a brand of clothing because it was just too perfect a line, and I couldn't find any other reference to it. But thanks to the internet, I found out it was real!)
posted by Ideal Impulse at 8:16 PM on November 22, 2011
(as a related aside, I assumed he was lying about "Angel's Flight" being a brand of clothing because it was just too perfect a line, and I couldn't find any other reference to it. But thanks to the internet, I found out it was real!)
posted by Ideal Impulse at 8:16 PM on November 22, 2011
This issue of Poetry Magazine, from last December, featured a brief interview with each of the poets featured in the issue, about their poems. They talk about what references they're making, what the poem means to them, things like that. Click on any poem from that issue and then hit "read the Q&A."
posted by Rinku at 8:27 PM on November 22, 2011
posted by Rinku at 8:27 PM on November 22, 2011
I believe The Waste Land has footnotes.
Yeah, T.S. Eliot's the best-known example of this. But the story's a little strange and he seems to have had some doubts about the practice, at least as it applied to The Waste Land.
If you don't mind a little tangent, the last page of my Frank Kermoded-edited Penguin copy (funnily enough, I was reading it yesterday) quotes Eliot telling it like this:
At first he put down references for his quotations "with a view to spiking the guns of critics of my earlier poems who had accused me of plagiarism," but when the 1922 edition was deemed "inconveniently short" as it was going to print, "I set to work to expand the notes, in order to provide a few more pages of printed matter." He goes on to call his notes "a remarkable exposition of bogus scholarship" and to regret sending "so many enquirers off on a wild goose chase after Tarot cards and the Holy Grail."
posted by mediareport at 8:31 PM on November 22, 2011 [1 favorite]
Yeah, T.S. Eliot's the best-known example of this. But the story's a little strange and he seems to have had some doubts about the practice, at least as it applied to The Waste Land.
If you don't mind a little tangent, the last page of my Frank Kermoded-edited Penguin copy (funnily enough, I was reading it yesterday) quotes Eliot telling it like this:
At first he put down references for his quotations "with a view to spiking the guns of critics of my earlier poems who had accused me of plagiarism," but when the 1922 edition was deemed "inconveniently short" as it was going to print, "I set to work to expand the notes, in order to provide a few more pages of printed matter." He goes on to call his notes "a remarkable exposition of bogus scholarship" and to regret sending "so many enquirers off on a wild goose chase after Tarot cards and the Holy Grail."
posted by mediareport at 8:31 PM on November 22, 2011 [1 favorite]
Marianne Moore was an annotator--or perhaps we could say quoter or collagist?
posted by MidSouthern Mouth at 9:45 PM on November 22, 2011
posted by MidSouthern Mouth at 9:45 PM on November 22, 2011
this is sort of a left field suggestion, but jay-z's decoded has many excellently footnoted poems (ok lyrics, but same thing in a way). also it's an excellent book if you have even a passing interest in rap.
posted by messiahwannabe at 11:12 PM on November 22, 2011
posted by messiahwannabe at 11:12 PM on November 22, 2011
Coleridge added marginal notes to The Rime of the Ancient Mariner several years after it was first written, although these aren't explanations of specific references in the poem so much as a kind of running commentary.
posted by misteraitch at 3:08 AM on November 23, 2011
posted by misteraitch at 3:08 AM on November 23, 2011
Edward Edwin Foot.
He did it relentlessly. Seriously.
posted by kyrademon at 3:47 AM on November 23, 2011
He did it relentlessly. Seriously.
posted by kyrademon at 3:47 AM on November 23, 2011
Also, Erasmus Darwin appended numerous footnotes to his poem The Botanic Garden; Shelley wrote footnotes to Queen Mab; Southey wrote footnotes for his epics Thalaba the Destroyer and The Curse of Kehama; and Byron annotated his Childe Harold's Pilgrimage.
posted by misteraitch at 4:40 AM on November 23, 2011
posted by misteraitch at 4:40 AM on November 23, 2011
There are notes (by the poet) in Donald Justice's A Donald Justice Reader: Selected Poetry and Prose
posted by Jahaza at 8:10 AM on November 23, 2011
posted by Jahaza at 8:10 AM on November 23, 2011
Well, the bulk of Nabokov's "Pale Fire" are "annotations" to a poem. Kind of.
posted by digitalprimate at 2:20 PM on November 23, 2011
posted by digitalprimate at 2:20 PM on November 23, 2011
I'm assuming your issue is a desire to find a way to get past the initial feeling of not understanding a poem and not knowing how to proceed? While I understand where your idea of finding a self-annotating poet is coming from, I don't think you'd get what you want in that way. A poet who adds their own footnotes to their poems would be signalling that their aim is to create poems that are more abstruse and inaccessible than typical poems. Instead, you could try (a) reading poets known for their accessibility or (b) using anthologies or textbooks that guide you through your initial encounter with a poem by providing introductions, commentary, questions to think about, etc.
There might also be an underlying assumption in your question--a very common assumption--that poems have some clear meaning hiding beneath the puzzling exterior and that it's all a matter of decoding it. I think reading a poem is instead an experience of continual generation of meanings (changing with each re-reading), accompanied by pleasure (that can exist even without any need for meaning) in the sensation of the words, lines, images.
I apologize in advance if I misinterpreted your question and you really just want a poet who writes footnotes.
posted by Paquda at 3:24 PM on November 23, 2011
There might also be an underlying assumption in your question--a very common assumption--that poems have some clear meaning hiding beneath the puzzling exterior and that it's all a matter of decoding it. I think reading a poem is instead an experience of continual generation of meanings (changing with each re-reading), accompanied by pleasure (that can exist even without any need for meaning) in the sensation of the words, lines, images.
I apologize in advance if I misinterpreted your question and you really just want a poet who writes footnotes.
posted by Paquda at 3:24 PM on November 23, 2011
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by J. Wilson at 7:33 PM on November 22, 2011