Commentaries - February 2016

Twenty-six items from Special Collections (q)

Exhibit 'Q': Chinese. (Su Dongpo, ['He is like white clouds …'], circa 1095 CE)

Bibliography: Mount Lu Revisited: Buddhism in the Life and Writings of Su Shih, Beata Grant (University of Hawaii Press, 1994). The poem appears on pages 161–2.

Twenty-six items from Special Collections (p)

Exhibit 'P': Occitan. (William VII, Count of Poitiers, IX Duke of Aquitaine, ['Farai un vers de dreyt nien'], circa 1105 CE)

Bibliography: Four books: • Lyrics of the Troubadours and Trouvères: An Anthology and a History, translations and introductions by Frederick Goldin (Peter Smith, 1983; originally published 1973) • Proensa: An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry, selected and translated by Paul Blackburn (University of California Press, 1978) • Poems of William of Poitou, translated by Thomas G. Bergin (Yale, 1955) • Selected Translations, W.D. Snodgrass (BOA Editions, 1998).

Twenty-six items from Special Collections (O)

Exhibit 'O': Medieval Irish. (Anonymous, 'The Deer's Cry,' eighth century)

Bibliography: My copy-text for the English translation of the poem was Selections from Ancient Irish Poetry, ed./trans. by Kuno Meyer, 2nd edition (Constable and Co., Ltd., 1913). The poem appears on pages 25–27. ¶ Copy-text for the original poem in 8th-century Irish was Thesaurus Palaeohibernicus: A Collection of Old-Irish Glosses, Scholia, Prose, and Verse, Vol. II, edited by Whitley Stokes and John Strachan (Cambridge, 1903). The poem appears on pages 354–358.

Twenty-six items from Special Collections (n)

Exhibit ‘N’: Serbian. (Vasko Popa, 'Homage to the Lame Wolf,' 1975)

Bibliography: Homage to the Lame Wolf: Selected Poems, Vasko Popa, translated with an introduction by Charles Simic (Oberlin College Press, 1987).

Twenty-six items from Special Collections (m)

Exhibit ‘M’: Urdu. (Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, eighteen poems, nineteenth century)

Bibliography: Ghazals of Ghalib: Versions from the Urdu by Aijaz Ahmad, W.S. Merwin, Adrienne Rich, William Stafford, David Ray, Thomas Fitzsimmons, Mark Strand, and William Hunt, ed. Aijaz Ahmad (Columbia University Press, 1971).