Tuesday, December 11, 2012

News at Eleven: Ever since he began to be published in English,

[Octavio] Paz was blessed with excellent translators: William Carlos Williams, Muriel Rukeyser, Elizabeth Bishop, Paul Blackburn, Denise Levertov, and Charles Tomlinson all tried their hands at rendering him in English, and they all make appearances in this book. The Spanish-to-English translation on offer here--by these poets and by Weinberger--does a fine job of recreating many of Paz's effects. Paz is a highly quotable poet; his poems glow with dramatic (sometimes startling) images, as well as essayistic aphorisms. These English versions are full of resonant phrases of their own: "Primavera sin premura" and "las estrellas escriben" lose their liquid alliteration in English, but "an unhurried spring" and "the stars write" are lovely and memorable in their own right.

from Bookslut: Forever Arriving: The Poems of Octavio Paz

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