May 31, 2019
Why American Poets Ought to Translate More Poems
As literary translators go, I am mostly a fraud, and thus beset by a fear that all frauds—from TV psychics to reality TV presidents—share: to be exposed by those who […]
March 17, 2019
On The Selected Poetry of Amir Khusrau
In the Bazaar of Love: The Selected Poetry of Amir Khusrau. Translated by Paul E. Losensky and Sunil Sharma Penguin Classics India, 2011. 164 pages. The Introduction to this […]
September 11, 2017
Joseph Brodsky, the Incredible Star: An Interview with Ellendea Proffer Teasley
Let’s be honest: as writers, we sometimes fantasize about writing a bestseller. We daydream that the book we worked so hard to craft goes on to receive national press and […]
February 18, 2016
The Weight that Will Make Us Planets
A week before the Lunar New Year, an old friend whom you met only last year drops you a line, which means you Skype. Lately the computer freezes because he’s […]
October 6, 2012
Unwriting the Books of the Dead: Anne Carson and Robert Currie on Translation, Collaboration, and History
Before Anne Carson took the odes of Gaius Valerius Catullus as cartographical tools for navigating the all-too-unmappable space of her brother Michael’s death, Louis Zukofsky translated them. In the preface to […]
April 6, 2012
“When they rise, it’s as if they were already falling”: On Magdalena Tulli’s “Moving Parts”
Last week I wrote about this year’s Best Translated Book Award and noted a few concerns about the relative lack of women authors in translation. So why not use this […]
March 29, 2012
A year in translation
I’m late to point this out, but throughout March the always rich international-lit blog Three Percent has been running its “25 Days of the BTBA” series, in which it highlights […]
February 25, 2012
Translation and money laundering
A friend just sent me a link to this excellent interview at the Loggernaut reading series (dateless, it seems, and also timeless?) with Ammiel Alcalay—author, most recently, of “neither wit […]
June 15, 2011
Materials Wednesday: like as simple as playing snowballs
About a year and a half ago, I had the good luck to be invited to Beijing University by professor and poet Jiang Tao, and with his letter of introduction, […]
May 20, 2011
Translating Immediacy and Manic Delight: A Micro-Interview with Rebecca Wadlinger
Rebecca Wadlinger is a doctoral candidate in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston, where she works as the managing editor of Gulf Coast. She has recently received […]