Poets Translate Poets: A Hudson Review Anthology (46 page)

Deitz 1st pages.indd 439

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

Johanna Keller
(Ahoskie, North Carolina, b. 1955). Founding director of the Goldring Arts Journalism program at the S. I. Newhouse School, Syracuse University, she has written on classical music for newspapers and periodicals

and published poems in literary magazines.

Galway Kinnell
(Providence, Rhode Island, b. 1927). A 1984 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, he was Erich Maria Remarque Professor

of Creative Writing at New York University. In 1983 his
Selected Poems
won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award.

Bela Kiralyfalvi
(Nyiregyháza, Hungary, b. 1937). Having fl ed Hungary during the 1956 uprising, he was a professor of theater at Wichita State University where he taught dramatic theory, criticism, and script analysis. In 1974 he

founded the National Playwriting Contest for students.

Carolyn Kizer
(Spokane, Washington, b. 1923). Founder of
Poetry Northwest
in 1959, she edited the magazine until 1965. In 1964 she taught in Pakistan

and that year won the Pulitzer Prize for
Yin: New Poems
. Her translations include poems from Chinese, Japanese, and Urdu.

Richmond Lattimore
(Paotingfu, China, 1906–84). A translator of classical Greek literature, he taught Greek at Bryn Mawr College (1935–71). He is noted

for his translations of
Th

e Iliad
and
Th

e Odyssey
, and he received the 1962 Bol-

lingen Prize in Translation for Aristophanes’s
Th

e Frogs
.

Denise Levertov
(Ilford, England, 1923–97). Identifi ed with the Black Mountain school, her poetry engages humanist and sociopolitical themes like the

Vietnam War. Her collection
Evening Train
(1992) was particularly lauded for its mature style, as was her posthumous book
Th

is Great Unknowing: Last

Poems
(1999).

P. H. Liotta
(Burlington, Vermont, b. 1956). A professor of humanities at Salve Regina University, he published
Th

e Wolf at the Door: A Poetic Cycle
,

translated from the Macedonian of Bogomil Gjuzel, in 2001. As a member of

the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, he shared the 2007 Nobel

Peace Prize.

440
N o t e s o n T r a n s l at o r s

Deitz 1st pages.indd 440

Deitz 1st pages.indd 440

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

Robert J. Littman
(Newark, New Jersey, b. 1943). A professor of classics at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, he specializes in Greek literature, history, and the Greek Bible as well as Egyptian archaeology.

Charles Martin
(New York, New York, b. 1942). He has published transla-

tions of Catullus, Ovid, and the Bhagavad Gita (with Gavin Flood) and an

introduction to the poetry of Catullus. In 2005 he received the Award for

Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Th

e latest of his

fi ve books of poems is
Signs and Wonders
(2011).

David Mason
(Bellingham, Washington, b. 1954). Among his many books

are a memoir of Greece,
News from the Village: Aegean Friends
(2010),
and a verse novel,
Ludlow
(2007), in which Greek immigrant characters play a prominent role. He was appointed poet laureate of Colorado (2010–14).

Daniel Mendelsohn
(New York, New York, b. 1960). His books include
Th
e

Lost: A Search for Six of Six Million
(2006), which won the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Prix Médicis in France. He has also written a two-

volume translation, with commentary, of the complete poems of C. P. Cavafy

(2009). He teaches at Bard College.

W. S. Merwin
(New York, New York, b. 1927). His poem “Meng Tzu’s Song”

appeared in volume 1, no. 1 (1948), of the
Hudson Review
while he was still a student at Princeton University. Twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize, he was

poet laureate in 2010–11. His
Selected Translations
was published in 2012.

Robert Mezey
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, b. 1935). Professor emeritus at Pomona College, he won the 2002 Poets’ Prize for his
Collected Poems, 1952–

1999
. He is well known for his translations of Jorge Luis Borges.

Marianne Moore
(Kirkwood, Missouri, 1887–1972). A leading modernist

poet recognized nationally by the early 1930s, her
Collected Poems
earned her the Bollingen Prize in Poetry in 1951 as well as both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award in 1952.

Frederick Morgan
(New York, New York, 1922–2004). A founder of the
Hudson Review
in 1948, he edited the magazine for fi ft y years. Among his eight No t e s on T r a n sl at or s
441

Deitz 1st pages.indd 441

Deitz 1st pages.indd 441

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

collections of poems, he published
Refractions
(1981), composed entirely of his translations. He was made Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the

French government (1984) and was winner of the 2001 Aiken Taylor Award in

Modern American Poetry.
Th

e One Abiding
(2003) was his last book of poems.

Robin Morgan
(Lake Worth, Florida, b. 1941). A poet, novelist, and antholo-gist, she is an infl uential force in the feminist movement. In 1999 she pub-

lished
A Hot January: Poems, 1996–1999
.

Timothy Murphy
(Hibbing, Minnesota, b. 1951). In 2011 he published three books of poems:
Mortal Stakes
,
Faint Th

under
, and
Hunter’s Log
.

Kostas Myrsiades
(Vourliotes, Samos, Greece, b. 1939). A professor emeritus of comparative literature and English at West Chester University, he is a distinguished translator and Neohellenist. He was the fi rst American to receive the Gold Medallion (1995) from the Hellenic Society of Translators of Literature,

awarded annually by the Greek government to a scholar from any country.

Nguyen Ngoc Bich
(Hanoi, Vietnam, b. 1937). A founder of the National

News Service for readers of Vietnamese-language newspapers worldwide, in

1997 he joined Radio Free Asia to direct the Vietnamese Service. In 1975 he

published
A Th

ousand Years of Vietnamese Poetry
.

John Frederick Nims
(Muskegon, Michigan, 1913–99). A former editor of

Poetry
magazine, he taught poetry at several universities. In 1990 he published two collections of poems,
Zany in Denim
and
Th

e Six-Cornered Snow-

fl ake, and Other Poems
, as well as
Sappho to Valéry: Poems in Translation.

Michael Paul Novak
(Cicero, Illinois, b. 1935). He was professor emeritus of English at St. Mary’s University in Leavenworth, Kansas, where he taught for

more than forty years. Among his publications were two books:
Sailing by the
Whirlpool
(1978) and
Story to Tell: Michael Paul Novak Poetry
(1991).

Christina Bratt [Paulston]
(Stockholm, Sweden, b. 1932). A professor emer-ita of linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, she is the author of
Linguistic
Minorities in Multilingual Settings: Implications for Language Policies
(1994).

442
N o t e s o n T r a n s l at o r s

Deitz 1st pages.indd 442

Deitz 1st pages.indd 442

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

Richard Pevear
(Waltham, Massachusetts, b. 1943). He is a poet, essayist, and translator. Along with a number of works translated from the Russian,

including Leo Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
, in collaboration with his wife, Larissa Volokhonsky (see below), he has also published translations from the Italian

and French.

Ezra Pound
(Hailey, Idaho, 1885–1972). A modernist poet, Pound played a pivotal role in the imagist and vorticist movements. In 1949 he won the Bollingen Prize in Poetry for his
Pisan Cantos
, written while imprisoned by the US Army in Pisa for broadcasts deemed traitorous. He was eventually hospi-talized in St. Elisabeths Hospital in Washington, DC, where he received many

young writers before his release in 1958.

Jennifer Reeser
(Lake Charles, Louisiana, b. 1968). She is primarily a translator of Russian and French literature, most notably the work of Charles

Baudelaire.

F. D. Reeve
(Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, b. 1928). A noted Russian translator, in 2007 he gave the keynote address in Moscow at the International Confer-ence of Translators of Russian Literature. In 1962 he escorted Robert Frost to a private meeting with Nikita Khrushchev. His novella–prose poem
Nathan-iel Purple
was published in 2012.

John Ridland
(London, England, b. 1933). A research professor in the English Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he fi rst came to

the United States as an infant. In addition to poetry itself, he has a special interest in Australian and New Zealand literature. His most recent book of

poems is
Happy in an Ordinary Th

ing
(2013).

Lawrence Rogers
(Oakland, California, b. 1933). He teaches Japanese literature at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. In 2004 he was awarded the trans-

lation prize by Columbia University’s Donald Keene Center for Japanese

Culture for his book
Tokyo Stories: A Literary Stroll
.

Jerome Dennis Rothenberg
(New York, New York, b. 1931). He began his

publishing career in the late 1950s as a translator of German poetry. In 1959

No t e s on T r a n sl at or s
443

Deitz 1st pages.indd 443

Deitz 1st pages.indd 443

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

he founded Hawk’s Well Press as a venue to publish collections by up-and-

coming poets of that era.

May Sarton
(Wondelgem [now Ghent], Belgium, 1912–95). From early son-

nets published in 1929 to her last collection,
Coming into Eighty
(1994), she wrote more than twenty books of poetry, fi ction, and nonfi ction; a play;

and several screenplays. In 1993 she was the recipient of the Levinson Prize

for Poetry.

Peter Dale Scott
(Montreal, Canada, b. 1929). He cofounded the Peace and Confl ict Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley, and

was an antiwar speaker during the Vietnam and Gulf Wars. In 2002 he

received the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry for his trilogy of books titled

Seculum.

Lore Segal
(Vienna, Austria, b. 1928). A noted novelist, translator, and author of children’s books, her novel
Her First American
won an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1986, and her short

story “Th

e Reverse Bug” was included in
Best American Short Stories, 1989
.

Louis Simpson
(Kingston, Jamaica, 1923–2012). Poet, editor, translator, and critic, he received the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for his collection of poems
At the
End of the Open Road
. His volume of translations titled
Modern Poets of
France: A Bilingual Anthology
won the 1998 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award.

W. D. Snodgrass
(Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, 1926–2009). He won the 1960

Pulitzer Prize for his fi rst poetry collection,
Heart’s Needle
. Th

ough oft en

called a “confessional” poet, he demurred, claiming his poems were simply

personal. His
Selected Translations
won the 1999 Harold Morton Landon

Translation Award.

A. E. Stallings
(Decatur, Georgia, b. 1968). A 2011 recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, she studied classics at the University of Georgia,

Athens, and now lives in Athens, Greece. Her verse translation of Lucretius’s

Th

e Nature of Th

ings
appeared in 2007 and a new collection of poems,
Olives
,

in 2012.

444
N o t e s o n T r a n s l at o r s

Deitz 1st pages.indd 444

Deitz 1st pages.indd 444

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

6/26/2013 6:52:27 AM

Alan Sullivan
(New York, New York, 1948–2010). In addition to his translation of
Beowulf
(2004) with Timothy Murphy (see above), his translation
78

Psalms of King David
was published in 2011.

Charles Tomlinson
(Stoke-on-Trent, England, b. 1927). Poet, artist, and translator, he taught at the University of Bristol for thirty-six years and edited
Th

e Oxford Book of Verse in Translation
(1980). His
New Collected Poems
was published in 2009. In 2001 he was made a Commander of the British Empire

for his contributions to literature. Other honors include the 2001 and 2004

Italian Premio Internazionale di Poesia and the
Hudson Review
’s Bennett Award for Achievement in Literature (1993).

Larissa Volokhonsky
(Leningrad [now Saint Petersburg], Russia, b. 1945).

Together with her husband, Richard Pevear (see above), she translates Rus-

sian literature into English, including works by Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor

Dostoyevsky. Th

eir translation of a book by each author received the
PEN/