Our DG for the Translation Bake-off is the outstanding Italianist, Geoffrey Brock, translator of the definitive Cesare Pavese, as well as of Pinocchio, and works by Calasso and Eco.
He is also a distinguished poet in his own right, admired by Richard Wilbur.
Here's his
"Statement of Poetics" for which I'm grateful to Petra.
On his
Home Page you can find examples of his work both as translator and poet, and admiring reviews of Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950 by Cesare Pavese (Copper Canyon 2002; Carcanet 2004).
Here's a sample:
“An exemplary volume. As a poet-translator, Brock has brought Pavese’s poems to English without a loss of defining rhythm and meaning, and with an attention that indicates the translator’s profound understanding of another writer’s poetics.” —Judges’ Citation, PEN Center USA Translation Award
“Brock’s translation is idiomatic, rhythmical, and utterly gorgeous. The poems actually seem to rise from the page, since this translator knows how to convey Pavese’s plain-speech eloquence and his painterly crispness. It helps to have a real poet as a translator.” —Peter Campion
“Superb.” —Robert Bly,
The American Poet
“One of the marks of a good translation is the ability of the translator to create a ‘silence’ where the author’s voice can be heard. One listens, rather than reads. And it is this silence that allows the reader-turned-listener to hear the assimilation, the incorporation, the metabolization of Pavese’s world in Geoffrey Brock’s translations.” —Judges’ Citation, MLA Lois Roth Translation Award
“[Brock’s Pavese] is the best, and the most ample, in English to date.” —The Guardian (UK)
“Until now, Pavese’s poetry hasn’t been available in an English translation that carries both the colloquialness of his language and the haunting rhythms of his verse. Geoffrey Brock’s fine new translation has met this need…. The cadences [are] beautifully rendered… It is a rhythm that…puts a spell on the listener, running like a bass line through the poems.”
Our own Andrew Frisardi, writing in the Los Angeles Times.
Here is Geoffrey’s illuminating essay on the exceptional metrical challenges of translating Pavese.
As a poet, Geoffrey won the New Criterion Poetry Prize for
Weighing Light (Ivan R. Dee, 2005), of which Richard Wilbur had this to say:
“Brock’s poems are delightful in ways which are all too rare nowadays. I am grateful for their freshness of attack, the play and interplay of their words, and their speaking voice, which talks so often in the key of rueful comedy.”
Translation Distinguished Guest – Geoffrey Brock
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