This is where I translate and contemplate poetry from around the world.
Note: I tend to focus on works from Russian, German and French-speaking cultures. That’s not to be exclusive, but rather because those are the languages I’m most interested in at present.
When I asked a professor of Russian at my university for suggestions on lesser-known and less frequently translated Russian poets, she suggested Silver Age poet Maria Petrovykh. Petrovykh was friends with such luminaries as Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandelstam, and although they appreciated her work, she didn’t publish much or get a whole lot of … Read more
Today’s translated poem is a bit less fall-positive than you might expect from this blog by now, but it’s one that rather stole my heart while I was in Russia, as its simplicity made it easy to learn and remember. The text is “Autumn” by Alexei Nikolaevich Plescheev, a revolutionary poet of the 19th century — … Read more
So this spring — to my great excitement and gratitude — I’ve been allowed to sit in on a graduate seminar on translation theory and practice. (EEEEE!) For this week, as a practical exercise, we were to translate a brief Spanish-language poem (actually, a single stanza from a much longer Spanish poem) into English or … Read more
In 1828, the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin wrote a short, lighthearted love poem to Anna Olenina, a girl he was pursuing at the time. Almost two hundred years later, that small poem is one of Pushkin’s most well-known and beloved verses. It also has a reputation for causing a particular conundrum for English translations. … Read more
I promised Facebook I would, and so it is done! Presenting a Russian-to-English translation of this brief but beautiful poem by famed Silver Age poet Marina Tsvetaeva: You can listen to a nice reading of it here. I loved this poem as soon as I saw the word рябина (ryabina) — rowan. Besides the Siberian birch, which … Read more