On Translating Anna Piwkowska
t is easy to identify with Piwkowska’s poetry, but it is also easy to become enthralled by the incantatory rhythms, to want to stay forever in her world of… More
At the Burning Abyss
No one who studies Trakl can fail to notice his penchant for colors, and some of his interpreters point out that Trakl’s colors express and evoke opposing sensations: White… More
On Translating Franz Fühmann
Fühmann had discovered Trakl’s apocalyptic poems as a soldier, and they shook his faith in Nazism. On furlough at the very end of the war, Fühmann learned that his… More
On the Frontiers of Plaster (A Few Notes on Sleep)
Take a man at noon. He stands erect. Overhead is the sun. I won’t say this man has no wish to maintain this position for all time, but it’s… More
On Translating Jean Ferry
"I thought: here is an author who unites disparate readerships, surely of use in our niche-fractured literary landscape, where readers divided by camp and interest can be reunited by… More
On Translating Vasily Kamensky
Approaching words as assemblages of letters, Kamensky employs the Futurist device of sdvig, or distortion, to inject modularity, pliability, and indeterminacy into the lexical field: by combining words, or… More
Tango with Cows
Tango with Cows is a key artifact in the history of Russian Futurism, modernist typography, visual poetry, and artist’s books. Printed in Moscow in 1914 on brightly-colored pentagonal wallpaper,… More
France, story of a childhood
I am a girl. I have two obedient sisters, six brothers, and a father who blames me for being born. More
On Translating Zahia Rahmani
When I first discovered Rahmani’s work in 2009, I was ignorant of the Harki identity—I had never even heard the term. Gripped by the author’s sense of urgency… More
On Translating Raúl Zurita
Zurita knew from firsthand experience what it was like to be imprisoned under the dictatorship. One of the poems in “The Country of Planks” is named after the… More