Customer Reviews

Proensa: An Anthology of Troubadour Poetry

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If it were only for Paul Blackburn's translations of the poems of Marcabru and Pierre Vidal alone, this anthology of Troubadour poetry would be worth it. As an anthology it shares the inherent weaknesses of any anthology: reading straight through becomes tedious and overwhelming. But I have been living with this one for over twenty years now and I have found that this particular anthology also shares the strengths of a very good anthology: many of the poets have grown in my estimation over time by their own virtues and the preordained association with the poets who initially attracted my attention. On returning visits I have lingered with those to whom I intially gave only a cursory glance on my way to those who moved me more immediately. In such cases one notices the individual moment as opposed to overall thrust or movement in the genius of a great poet. With the great poets we appreciate them for how their individual utterances build toward an overarching vision, and with the less well known poets we appreciate how they the crystalize the moments in which we engage them.

It is also extremely fertile to speculate upon how Blackburn's attempts to find an adequate and appropriate and comtemporary versified voice for these poets influenced both himself and others associated with the Black Mountain School and the New York School during the later 1950's, the 1960's and into the early 1970's. The troubadors famously sang their poems to a musical accompaniment that was both essential and now lost. Blackburn attempted to deal with the lost muscial nature of the originals by resorting to the examples of Pound, Olson, and perhaps, Duncan, to arrange the rhythms he needed on the page.

This is yet another book that needs to stay in print.