December 07, 2007

Translation: Excellent Reading

 

Kharms Chad Post at Three Percent has proposed a Best Translations of 2007 that naturally serves as a great to-read list. I put in a few votes: Day In Day Out by Terezia Mora, translated from the German by Michael Henry Heim; The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolano, translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer; The Collected Poems: 1956-1998 by Zbigniew Herbert, translated from the Polish by Czeslaw Milosz, Peter Dale Scott, and Alissa Valles; The Complete Poetry: A Bilingual Edition by Cesar Vallejo, translated from the Spanish by Clayton Eshleman (confession here: I’ve read nearly all of the Herbert and a bunch of the Vallejo [it’s fairly massive at 732 pages], but my shallowness at nominating them shouldn’t take anything away from Valles’ or Eshleman’s accomplishment, which the critical establishment considers consderable).

Another great surprise: I only discovered the brilliant Soviet era writer Danil Kharms this year and see from Chad’s list that Overlook Press has published his book Today I Wrote Nothing. Bunch of others here on my reading list already, particularly the Petterson, which everyone raves about, the Cortazar because I can’t quite figure him out yet, and Amulet, another Bolaño title.

Speaking of translation, I just found The Brooklyn Rail’s site, In Translation, an on-line only venue for unpublished literary translations and a resource for authors and translators looking to collaborate.

And… Circumference Magazine, which publishes new and classic translations of poetry in bilingual format, is set to release issue number six.

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Amazing finds!  An excellent list to investigate and a couple more translation sites to add to the blogroll.  It’s exciting to see more developments on the translation front.

    – amcorrea (12/10 09:44 AM)



Kharms is brilliant!  I have not seen this title, and will put it on my Amazon wishlist.  I’m also adding your blog to my favourites - a brilliant blog and an inspiration.

    – Anne Marie (01/15 11:15 AM)


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"Translation: Excellent Reading" was posted December 07, 2007 and written by Bud Parr.

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One of the reasons I publish online!

– L. Lee Lowe
on “Would He Do it Again?”

Last year Derrick Brown did living room readings. I don’t think anyone there had ever read his poetry; I had barely been introduced a few days before. http://vimeo.com/6013960

Compared to any staged, stacked or emceed poetry reading, well, it was kind of like learning you hadn’t ever had good sex.

Granted, he’s a more engaging poet than many, and he reads poems that should be read aloud, like they should sound.  I still think that a lot of the intimacy would have been lost in any a more austere setting.

As a listener, it had a profound and searing impact; if I could speak for the non-poetry-reading kind, I’d say they could not help but connect with this living poetry that was funny and sad and sweet and took you somewhere.

– Emily
on “Would He Do it Again?”

Awesome! I always loved Sontag’s ‘Notes On Camp’. Lucid and concise.


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