[New-Poetry] Re: New-Poetry Digest, Vol 30, Issue 29

[Alexander Dickow]

"One huge  
impediment is that I cannot speak Swedish.  How much
of a poem is  
translatable seems to vary by poem and poet, but not
having the  
original sound or native sense, it is impossible to
tell how much has  
come across."

Alas, alack. This perception has done so much harm to
translation: we read them, and think we are trying to
read some other text "through" them. Why can these
translations not stand alone, as poems in their own
right? The very best poetic translations, after all,
are so much akin to rewritings. New poems, built on
top of an old one, but why not forget the ruins under
the foundation?
Alternatively, one might wonder what's under the
foundations of any old poem, as though it were a
mistranslation, already.
Yours,
Alex


www.alexdickow.net/blog/
   
  les mots! ah quel désert à la fin
  merveilleux. -- Henri Droguet