Lumpy pudding

Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant; what is irrelevant has been excluded, like lumps from pudding and 'bugs' from machinery. (Wimsatt & Beardsley)

Here we celebrate the excluded, lumpy parts of the pudding!

Jan 15, 2012 5:31pm
Osip Mandelstam: Alone I stare into the frost’s white face. It’s going nowhere, and I—from nowhere. Everything ironed flat, pleated without a wrinkle: Miraculous, the breathing plain. Meanwhile the sun squints at this starched poverty— The squint itself consoled, at ease … The ten-fold forest almost the same … And snow crunches in the eyes, innocent, like clean bread.                                                          — Jan. 16, 1937 — (Translated by John High and Matvei Yankelevich)

Osip Mandelstam:

Alone I stare into the frost’s white face.
It’s going nowhere, and I—from nowhere.
Everything ironed flat, pleated without a wrinkle:
Miraculous, the breathing plain.

Meanwhile the sun squints at this starched poverty—
The squint itself consoled, at ease …
The ten-fold forest almost the same …
And snow crunches in the eyes, innocent, like clean bread.

                                                         — Jan. 16, 1937

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(Translated by John High and Matvei Yankelevich)
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