Poets Translate Poets

In reviewing the Hudson Review’s history of publishing poetry in translation since 1948, the editors have compiled a collection that highlights the work of major American and English poets, most of whom are prominent in their own right, who, for the last half-century, have made accessible through their translations the work of their international colleagues. “Poets Translate Poets” contains translations of classical Latin and Greek poetry, classical Chinese and medieval East Asian verse, canonical French, German, and Italian writers, twentieth-century Latin American poetry, and a sampling of works from Persian, South Asian, South East Asian, Scandinavian, and Eastern European poets.

Poetry is a highly valued form of human expression, and poems are challenging texts to translate. For both reasons, people willingly work long and hard to translate them, for little pay but potentially high personal satisfaction. This book shows how experienced poetry translators translate poems and bring them to readers, and how they not only shape new poems, but also help communicate images of the source culture. It uses cognitive and sociological translation-studies methods to analyse real data, most of it from two contrasting source countries, the Netherlands and Bosnia. Case studies, including think-aloud studies, analyse how translators translate poems. In interviews, translators explain why and how they translate. And a 17-year survey of a country’s poetry-translation output explores how translators work within networks of other people and texts – publishing teams, fellow translators, source-culture enthusiasts, and translation readers and critics. In mapping the whole sweep of poetry translators’ action, from micro-cognitive to macro-social, this book gives the first translation-studies overview of poetry translating since the 1970s.

The fifth winner of the annual New Criterion Poetry Prize is Geoffrey Brock's Weighing Light. From the glinting scales in a painting by Vermeer to the white lines that disappear beneath a headlight's beam, Mr. Brock's poems measure out the often elusive weights and distances of the known world, confronting the unruly powers that threaten his burnished surfaces. His acute observations of landscape and of the smallest gestures that pass between people give rise to affecting human dramas both stark and deeply felt. Once read, his keen perceptions--all the more striking for the expertly cadenced music of his language and his supple use of poetic form--will be long remembered.

a href=http://prismmagazine.ca/2014/09/24/an-interview-with-daniel-scott-tysdal/"PRISM International magazine interview with Daniel Scott Tysdal/a This practical guide to composing original, evocative poetry explores all aspects of the writing process-including finding inspiration, organizing ideas on paper, revising first drafts, and sharing poems with others. Accessible and encouraging throughout, this invaluable resource helps beginner poets find their voice and master the tools of the trade."

Excerpt from Translations Underlying conspicuous success of the Seafarer order is Pound's conception of what the poet's job is: the rendering, without deformation, of something, within him or without, which he has clearly apprehended and seized in his mind. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Poetry is a highly valued form of human expression, and poems are challenging texts to translate. For both reasons, people willingly work long and hard to translate them, for little pay but potentially high personal satisfaction. This book shows how experienced poetry translators translate poems and bring them to readers, and how they not only shape new poems, but also help communicate images of the source culture. It uses cognitive and sociological translation-studies methods to analyse real data, most of it from two contrasting source countries, the Netherlands and Bosnia. Case studies, including think-aloud studies, analyse how translators translate poems. In interviews, translators explain why and how they translate. And a 17-year survey of a country s poetry-translation output explores how translators work within networks of other people and texts publishing teams, fellow translators, source-culture enthusiasts, and translation readers and critics. In mapping the whole sweep of poetry translators action, from micro-cognitive to macro-social, this book gives the first translation-studies overview of poetry translating since the 1970s."

Translation is a journey - a journey undertaken by the text, hopping around the world and mischievously border-crossing from one language to another, from one culture to another. For a translator, this journey can become a truly creative engagement with the otherness of the source text, an experience of self-discovery leading to understanding and enrichment, and ultimately towards a new text. This singular literary 'experiment' intends to magnify the idiosyncrasy of this translational journey. In the process translation reveals itself as an increasingly creative activity rather than simply a linguistic transfer. This volume consists of twelve translations of one poem: 'Les Fenêtres' by the French poet Apollinaire. The translators embarking on this project, all from different backgrounds and working contexts (poets, professional translators, academics, visual artists), were asked to engage with the inherent multimodality of this poem - inspired by Robert Delaunay's Les Fenêtres series of paintings. The result is a kaleidoscopic diversity of approaches and final products. Each translation is accompanied by self-reflective commentary which provides insight into the complex process and experience of translation, enticing the reader to join this journey too.