#this is great. – @little-brisk-archive on Tumblr

I’m absolutely delighted by the book I got today. It’s a translation of the complete poems of Catullus, done by a poet named Frank O. Copley in the late ‘50s. To my eternal gratitude, Copley decided that his Catullus should be very modern, reflecting the avant-garde sensibilities of, say, E. E. Cummings. Which is a pretty good analogy! The neoteric school was certainly as brash, unconventional, and attuned to sound and construction as the modernists were. So Copley writes a Catullus you could have found on the streets of 1958 New York or San Francisco, slangy and sarcastic—though capable of great lyricism. Here’s his rendering of Catullus 13, the invitation of Fabullus to dinner:

#ALL / NOSE #this is great.#poetry #watch your languages #catullus #frank o copley #antiquities