Catullus
 

Ok. There's this old poet named Catallus. I can't make heads or tails of his poems.

I'm not a great poetry fan but I can usually get the gist. Anyone have any tips or insights?

(Here's a sample.)

I think it's all the rhetorical transforms that get me.

My new method for parsing this crap is to take all the words and re-arrange them into the least cumbersome sentence possible. Whether that's the intended meaning or not I couldn't care less. Still makes a good story.

I think it suffers from the inherent uncertainty of translation, and being unsure of the idioms which were colloquially in use when the poems were written. The concepts are there, but they are ponderously rendered, as if the translator took great pains to make the translation as literal as possible. I'm guessing that a lot of the art and skill was lost in the process.

I did some Catullus poetry in Latin class at school and loved it. Having hit upon a poem we studied back then on the site you reference all I can say is can you choose to get another translation? This site has more understandable translations, for example.
[professional translator] Translating poetry is basically impossible. This guy has gone with the idea of matching the metre and scansion, and in so doing has made the meaning almost inaccessible[/professional translator]. If you need to also get a grasp of the metre and scansion, I'd say look at the original and read it aloud, treating it as simply sounds ....
Hope this helps.

Just as it was becoming cool to admit you were gay, I served as Official Hag to a male friend who had come out to three people that he knew "before".

I recall him being really into the poetry of Gaius Catullus because it was some really steamy gay love poetry or some such.

I continue not to be impressed.

I'd just like to find a translation that I could read for enjoyment. A friend of mine recommended it to me when I was complaining about romantic travails.

Ah, interesting...Maybe you have to be a gay man or a professional translator to appreciate it.

Find yourself a gay professional translator, and you're in the tall cotton, m'boy.