Terrific poetry reading on Saturday, September 25, celebrating National Translation Month and Hispanic Heritage Month in partnership with the Rutherford Civil Right Commission! Featuring Rutherford High School students reading poems of Latin-American authors in translation. Many thanks to Dana Serea, our Editorial Assistant, who curated and hosted the event, part of the 2021 Multicultural Festival, and to Paul Frazier for making it possible.
In this installment, we’re happy to share three exquisite new translations by Mike Alexander of poems by the lesser-known French Symbolist Pierre Louÿs. The poems are from Pierre Louÿs’ 1891 book, Astarte. He was a friend of Mallarmé, and he is better known today for his novels than for his poetry. We hope you like them as much as we do.
—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman
Today, we’re delighted to feature a new translation of the well-known poem by Armand Robin “Le programme en quelques siècles,” translated by the award-winning poet and translator Alfred Nicol. In Nicol’s own words, this exquisite poem is “by far the most well-known of his poems—for good reason, as it makes a profound sociopolitical statement, as relevant to the present as it was to the poet’s own time.”
And remember, in September and beyond: read, share, and spread the word about your favorite works in translation. Now more than ever, it’s important to make your voice heard.
—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman
In this installment, we’re excited to share a beautiful collection of 10 poems and tangos translated from the Spanish by Stephen Page. The authors include luminaries like Jorge Luis Borges, Federico García Lorca, Antonio Machado, Gabriela Mistral, Pablo Neruda, and César Vallejo, among others.
We’d love to hear from you! Let us know how you like our selections using #NTM2017 #TranslationMonth @TranslateMonth on Twitter. Happy National Translation Month!
—Claudia Serea & Loren Kleinman
Today’s feature of Russian poetry is an outstanding selection of poems that not only endured through the centuries, but successfully capture and reflect their time, providing a glimpse into the Russian psyche. We’re very excited to share these new translations by Basil Lvoff who also provides context for each text in his notes on the translation process. From Rozhdestvensky’s famous minuscule man who goes to war to Balmont’s symbolism to Turgenev’s famous prose poem in praise of language to Tyutchev’s quatrain in praise of Russia and Fet’s revolutionary melodism, these are examples of poetry that, in Lvoff’s own words, “emerged when people wanted to make their innermost beliefs memorable and all-binding.” Not to be missed.
—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman
Click HERE to read Five Memorable Russian Poems Translated by Basil Lvoff
We’re delighted to share with you today these new gems translated from the French and Spanish by the accomplished Hélène Cardona. And we’d love to hear from you! Let us know how you like our posts, or attend, share, and spread the word about our readings. Open your heart to new experiences and the beauty of the world, and celebrate its cultures and new voices with us using #NTM2017. Happy National Translation Month!
—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman
Click HERE to read New Translations of French and Spanish Poetry By Hélène Cardona
Today we’re excited to share with you selections from the groundbreaking Romanian masterpiece The Journal of Joy by Nicolae Steinhardt, one of the most revered dissident names in Romanian literature and philosophy. Born from a Jewish father and a Romanian mother, Nicolae Steinhardt (July 12, 1912 – March 29, 1989) was a Romanian writer, Orthodox hermit and father confessor. He was subject to anti-semitic discrimination during the fascist governments of World War II Romania and, after the war, he was persecuted and imprisoned by the communist regime. He was sentenced to 13 years of forced labor at Jilava Prison for “the crime of conspiracy against the social order.” In prison, on March 15th, 1960, he converted to Christianity under the direction of Mina Dobzeu, a Bessarabian hieromonk. In 1980, Steinhardt became a monk and lived in the Rohia Monastery working as a librarian until his death in March 1989, without getting the chance to see his country free of communism. The Journal of Joy, his best known and most celebrated work, was confiscated by the Securitate (the Romanian secret police) in 1972, restituted in 1975, and confiscated again in 1984. In the end, Steinhardt edited several versions, one of which was broadcast in a series of episodes via Radio Free Europe. Due to political reasons, most of Steinhardt’s work has been published post-mortem in its uncensored version after the communist regime collapse in 1989.
—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman
Today we’re happy to share two exquisite poems written in Farsi and translated in English by their author, Soodabeh Saeidnia. Soodabeh immigrated to the US in 2014, and is now living in Kew Gardens, New York. Immigration was a trigger to her poetry and after that her poems have been published in different American magazines and literary journals. She writes both in English and Farsi, sometimes mixing the languages in the same poem. Find out more about her in the insightful interview “Wake Up and Write Something, or You Will Be Eaten Soon” on the Great Weather for Media web site. We hope you’ll fall in love with her poetry as we did.
—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman
Click HERE to read Two Poems by Soodabeh Saeidnia Translated from the Persian by the Author
In this installment, we’re delighted to share three poems from the Tang and Song Dynasties translated by Lee Liyi. Accompanying the poems are lovely Chinese illustrations and notes about the poets and their historic context.
And remember, in September and beyond: read and share the translated poems you love using #NTM2017. Open your heart to new experiences and the beauty of the world, and celebrate its cultures and new voices. We hope our picks will become your new favorites. Let us know how you like them #TranslationMonth @TranslateMonth.
—Claudia Serea & Loren Kleinman
Once in a while, a book comes along, so good you don’t want to put it down, and when you do, out of necessity, it hurts. This is one of those books. We are so happy to share with you today poems from the award-winning book Y todos estábamos vivos (And We Were All Alive, Cardboard House Press, 2016) by Olvido García Valdés, translated and accompanied by an excellent essay about the craft and process by the acclaimed Catherine Hammond. These poems in English have not appeared in any other publication but the book. The poem beginning “spider mothers” was used in a public art project for the city of Phoenix. We hope you’ll like them as much as we did.
And remember, in September and beyond: read and share your favorite poems in translation. Let us know the authors you discover by using #NTM2017. We hope that Olvido García Valdés will be one of them. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!
—Claudia Serea and Loren Kleinman
