Translation

Rimbaud’s Last Revelation

by Alfred Corn July 26, 2011 Poetry

An encounter it would have been gripping to see: the 1875 reunion, in Stuttgart, of Arthur Rimbaud and Paul Verlaine, at the conclusion of the older poet’s two-year imprisonment in Belgium. (He had been convicted for firing on his lover and giving him a flesh wound in the wrist.) Verlaine told his friends that, as [...]

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Translating Horace: Ode i.5

by Micah Towery April 12, 2011 Translation

After wrestling through several Latin translations of Horace and trying to come to grips with him as a poet, I decided the best way to get “into Horace’s head” would be to translate him myself. Though Mrs. Krepich, my high school Latin teacher, might have hoped otherwise, my Latin, poor to begin with, has atrophied. [...]

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The Wonderful Burden of Living: A Review of Milan Djordjevic’s Oranges and Snow

by Genevieve Burger-Weiser March 28, 2011 Reviews

Oranges and Snow is a selection of Milan Djordjevic’s poems, translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic and published by Princeton University Press as part of the Facing Pages series. I was grateful to Simic’s pithy yet thorough introduction to Djordjevic as a writer and, just as importantly, as a person. Simic explains that Djordjevic [...]

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Kenneth Burke: Do you Eros into Logos? (with a note on Tu Fu)

by Micah Towery March 18, 2011 Translation

At the insistent behest of Joe Weil I have picked up a few Kenneth Burke books. In Joe’s opinion, Burke is one of the great American minds who has been unjustly put out of fashion. The more I read Burke, the more I agree with Joe. I’ve found that Burke’s explanations of art resonate with [...]

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How Tu Fu Works

by Micah Towery March 11, 2011 Aesthetics

I’ve been enjoying Kenneth Rexroth’s Classics Revisited lately (You can find ). Rexroth’s literary polymathism—his ability to speak (and translate) almost anything—seems touched only by Ezra Pound (who was a great translator, but not a good one). Rexroth’s admiration for Tu Fu as a poet (along with Joe Weil’s recommended book list) inspired me to [...]

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Voices of the Fourth Generation

by Jonathan Wei March 8, 2011 Poetry and Poetics

Unlike the anthologies of traditional Chinese poetry translated by Burton Watson and Stephen Owen, , compiled and translated by Keming Liu and some other writers and poets, is in bilingual format for the first time. The collection aims at “the attention of English-speaking readers a comprehensive and focused selection of contemporary Chinese poetry in translation.” [...]

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Some Notes on Translations of Horace

by Micah Towery February 7, 2011 Reviews

If you are a poet writing in English, you carry Horace in your own voice. I’m convinced there really is no way around this. I’m not sure there’s any possible strain of English poetry that can avoid his influence. And who would want to? Horace is a master of lyric poetry. To learn better how [...]

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