Piddle-paddling race of critics, rhizome-fanciers

By Antiphanes


(4th Century BCE)


Translated by Edwin Morgan


Piddle-paddling race of critics, rhizome-fanciers
digging up others' poetry, pusillanimous bookworms
coughing through brambles, aristophobes and Erinnaphils,
dusty bitter barkers from Callimachus' kennels,
poet's-bane, nightshade of the neophytes,
bacilli on singing lips: get off, get down, get lost!


This  is indeed a riotous piece. Never read such a trenchant piece blaming, banging, and bantering  critics and banishing them from the creative realm.


(Piddle-paddling-The act of doing anything other than what you should be doing or wasting time, Rhizome-creeping rootstalks,  Bramble-a rough prickly shrub. Erinna-a Greek poet, contemporary of Sappho. Callimachus-a noted poet, critic and scholar at the Library of Alexandria (240 BC), Nightshade-a toxic plant)


Source: 99 Poems in Translation- Edited by Harold Pinter, Anthony Astbury and Geoffrey Godbert