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  #1  
Unread 05-04-2003, 11:14 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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I'll address this to Rhina, but I invite anyone else to chime in with info on contemporary formalist poetry being written in other languages.

As a novice translator, I feel that my attempts to bring the often-translated works of giants like Garcilaso, Neruda, and company into contemporary English contribute little to anyone but myself. It's not so much that I can't compete with great translators like Barnstone et al. (although that's certainly true), as that I've been thinking it might be fun to try my hand at some more modern authors who haven't yet entered the canon--or, better still, who may never enter the canon and would be flattered to have a third-rate translator like me take a stab at their work.

Rhina, where might one find formalist poetry in Spanish these days? Where do you publish your Spanish-language stuff (which I'm assuming is metrical)? The few international journals I've seen are free-verse only, and often the language is too slangy for my dictionary to handle.

Would it be more productive to simply track down Spanish-language books by known formalists via interlibrary loan? If so, can you list the names (and perhaps titles) of some likely suspects?

Again, if anyone has similar info for other languages, feel free to jump in here.

Julie Stoner
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Unread 05-05-2003, 02:09 AM
Clive Watkins Clive Watkins is offline
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Dear Julie

Anthologies of modern poetry are a good source. Over the years, I have gathered a wide range of these and through them come across a number of foreign-language poets, some working metrically, some not, whose work I have then explored directly by buying their original collections. Though they appear in anthologies, not all will be poets of the first water, though of course some are.

With regard to my own practice, I do sometimes wonder if the effort of translating a poem which I think second-rate – even a second rate poem by a first-rate author - is really worth making, other, that is, than for the sake of the practice it gives me.

Regards

Clive Watkins
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Unread 05-05-2003, 06:04 AM
Roger Slater Roger Slater is offline
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I'm not saying there are no Spanish language formalists these days --I'll bet there are-- but my own habit of translating non-contemporary Spanish poets resulted from my desire to do formal translations and my (a) inability to find contemporary formalists,(b) desire to translate the best poems I could find, poems that had stood the test of time in Spanish, to give my translations the best chance of being good poems, and (c) desire to avoid problems with publication rights.

But yes, if there is someone post-Borges who wrote great sonnets in Spanish, I'd love to find out about it as well.

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  #4  
Unread 05-05-2003, 09:21 AM
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Chris Childers Chris Childers is offline
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I wonder if anybody knows of any good contemporary French poets? Or, I seem to be vaguely aware that some good poets have written in Italian since Dante and Petrarch, but I don't have any idea who they would be. So, who would they be?
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Unread 05-05-2003, 09:44 AM
Clive Watkins Clive Watkins is offline
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Dear Chris

For poets who made their names in the twentieth century, I value in French Philippe Jaccottet (who is Swiss) and Yves Bonnefoy, in Italian, Giuseppe Ungaretti, Salvatore Quasimodo and Eugenio Montale (the latter two being Nobel laureates). Montale, my favourite modern Italian poet, stands in subtle relation to Dante.

I imagine some of these writers would figure in many people’s choices of this kind.

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Clive
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Unread 05-06-2003, 04:20 PM
Rhina P. Espaillat Rhina P. Espaillat is offline
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I've been reading an excellent, fat paperback anthology titled "Antologia Catedra de Poesia de las Letras Hispanicas," edited by Jose Francisco Ruiz Casanova. The publisher is Catedra (Letras Hispanicas), and it dated 1998. I bought it in Madrid in 2000, I think. It takes you all the way from wonderful Medieval folk poetry to poets born mid-twentieth century. And it's full of poets who engage in the typical Spanish and Latin American habit of writing both formal and free verse poems. I'm looking right now at some sonnets by Carlos Edmundo de Ory (b. 1923), Eugenio de Nora (b. 1923)and numerous other poems in a variety of forms. The most recent poems tend to be free verse, both from Spain and from Latin America, but not wholly. I just keep looking through anthologies, and then remembering those poets who interest me and trying to find more by them.

But I don't think it's a mistake at all to try translating--again--people who have already appeared in English. When I compare the English versions of famous Spanish poems I noticed in English years ago with new versions by, say, Roger Slater or Robert Mezey, I'm so grateful for the new ones! The older ones worked in their day, but they feel dated and dusty now.
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Unread 05-06-2003, 11:04 PM
Julie Steiner Julie Steiner is offline
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Thanks, Clive and Rhina, for the anthology advice. Ooh, I'll have to track down that Catedra volume! And I do agree with you, Clive and Roger, that tranlating ungreat poems is a waste of precious time; but I also agree with Chris that we're all missing out on a lot of great (or at least interesting) material from authors who haven't yet gained international attention.

Thanks for contributing to this conversation. Anyone else have some good formalist leads to share?

Julie Stoner
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Unread 05-07-2003, 06:30 AM
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Chris Childers Chris Childers is offline
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Dear Clive,

Thank you very much for the list. I will attempt to find good bilingual editions of those poets--I wonder if there are any? My French is better than my Italian, but neither is good enough to read original poetry well without constantly resorting to a dictionary.

Chris
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  #9  
Unread 05-08-2003, 11:12 AM
Rhina P. Espaillat Rhina P. Espaillat is offline
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For good, clean, literal translations of Spanish poems, you still can't beat the Viking Book of Sp. Verse: the music is missing, but at least the sense is faithfully conveyed, and nothing extraneous has been added. Otherwise, stay away from free verse translations of formal poems, especially if they're by Robert Bly.
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  #10  
Unread 05-09-2003, 07:51 AM
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Mario Pita Mario Pita is offline
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Julie, you may want to look up David Escobar Galindo, from El Salvador, who has published quite a few sonnets. I have his book "Doy Fe de La Esperanza", primarily sonnets, and he has one called "Sonetos Penitenciales", which I have not seen.

Mario

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