Tuesday, March 11, 2008

Tua Pulchra Puella

Coming soon at The Salt River Review.

11 comments:

Frode Barth-Winslow said...

"tua pulchra puella" means "your beautiful girl"--your as in the second person possessive adjective: Is that my pretty girl? No, it's your pretty girl.

"You are a pretty girl" would be "tu pulchra puella" or "pulchra puella es" or, more naturally in Latin, "puella pulchra es" or "es pulchra puella."

I love the ending of this poem!

Charmi said...

Yes, those are the words stolen from Neil. And it might be the point, really, the incorrect grammar, the fumbling. What do you think?

Frode Barth-Winslow said...

Well...

Hm.

Yeah!

Mark said...

Found, stolen, jumbled, whatever... I like it. :)

And I'm with Mike, the last five lines are like acing the dismount.

Charmi said...

Thanks, Mark. I think you were sitting right next to Neil that night I stole those lines. It was summer. We were drinking beer at the Bucket outside.

Anonymous said...

This is pretty fantastic!

Mark said...

I do remember that. :)

Charmi said...

Thanks, Chad. I should steal from Neil more often.

It was a very nice evening, late summer...

I wonder if I should put a footnote with the correct translation at the bottom?

Anonymous said...

I might put "Tua pulchra
puella." in italics though... just because I like text within a poem that is spoken to be in italics...

personal preference really...

Charmi said...

But what about the other spoken stuff?

Anonymous said...

i'm going to go on record as saying that words spoken by a character in a poem should always be in italics... unless you are trying to be the Cormac McCarthy of poetry...