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Reader Discretion Advised: On profanity and the sublime in poetry (poetryfoundation.org)
6 points by lermontov on March 21, 2018 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments


You can go back much further than they do here to find truly delightful and extraordinarily rude poems.

Catullus 16[0](composed roughly 60 BC) is the obvious example, whose first line was not given in English translation until some time after 1950. (and look, i'm doing the same thing right now!)

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catullus_16


Did this piece censor e.e. cummings? So in a piece about using profanity in poetry, some words are still too profane to print as is?


i noticed that too.




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