I've been recently in my acting class with a modern adaption on Chekov's Uncle Vanya, a play called "Life Sucks," it occurred to me that I could apply the concept of an adaptation to some of the translations I was doing.   In other words, I would translate the original poem into English and then turn it…

For this translation of Borges, I decided to start with the fact that the original poem (Un Ciego) is a classical Shakespearian sonnet.  The decision to respect the form of the original poem when translating leads to a new poem that, while preserving the essential themes and sense of the original, adds and subtracts details for…

For a change of pace, how about a little Borges? The Nightmare Jorge Luis Borges (trans. Guy Conner) I dream of an ancient king, His crown of iron, his look of death, There are no faces like that nowadays, You sense his firm blade will obey him, loyal, like a dog I do not from…

I had expected to return to this blog with a number of essays on politics, but so far, I'm having trouble finishing the ones I have started.  Stay tuned. Meanwhile, I am trying my hand at translation again, this time of Spanish poetry.  I began by reading through the Complete Works of Federico Garcia Lorca,…

I have written about my approach to translation from one language to another here.  Recently, it occurred to me that recasting a poem from one form to another in the same language is also a form of  translation. Let me illustrate. In April of this year, I posted my translation of the introduction to Baudelaire's…

Elsewhere  I promised to discuss my philosophy of translations.    First and foremost, my goal has always been to produce a satisfactory poem in English that represents to the best of my ability the meanings, nuances and rhythms of the original poem.   If the original poem has an underlying rhyme scheme, I attempt to…

This is my translation of the famous introduction to the Flowers of Evil, just as I wrote it some twenty years ago.   My goal was to reproduce the rhyme scheme of the original  ( so much easier in French) and to give the English reader a sense of the poet's overripe imagery.   You can judge…

A parody is an imitation of a serious work of art for comic effect.   In general, I avoid true parodies; when I imitate a poet as, for example, here, I usually have some other purpose than simply making fun.   In 1967, however, I did write a parody of Edward Fitzgerald's  most famous quatrain from…

In an earlier post,  I talked about how  I got into polling for local elections, and gave a ;ist of key points about polls that local candidates should know.   This is the first of several posts in which I will elaborate on that list.  (Note: In all my posts on polling, I assume that the…

And this is my second translation from Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal: Very Far From Here by C.  Baudelaire (tr. 1967) This is the sacred chamber where That much bejeweled maiden fair Tranquil and ever-ready there Raising her breasts to the skies aloft Hears the drainpipes crying oft. It is the room of Dorothy, Then breeze…