Into English

A unique anthology that illuminates the history and the art of translating poetry into English

Into English presents poems, translations, and commentaries in an extraordinary format for readers to experience the intricacy and artistry of poetry in translation. Editors Martha Collins and Kevin Prufer invited twenty-five contributors, all of whom are translators and most of whom are also poets, to select one poem in another language and three English translations of it and provide an essay about the challenges of translating it. This wide-format anthology offers the original poem side by side with the translations, so readers can compare several different ways a poem can be rendered into English. Organized chronologically, the anthology opens with a poem in ancient Greek by Sappho beside translations by Anne Carson, Willis Barnstone, and Mary Barnard, followed by an essay by Karen Emmerich.

The original poems are by poets from across time and from around the world, including Basho, Rilke, Akhmatova, Garcia Lorca, Szymborska, Amichai, and Adonis. The languages represented are many, from Latin to Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Haitian Creole. More than seventy translators are included, among them Robert Bly, Ruth Fainlight, David Hinton, Rosemary Lloyd, Khaled Mattawa, and W. S. Merwin. Into English becomes a chorus in celebration of world poetry and translation what George Kalogeris, quoting Virgil, describes as song replying to song replying to song.

Contributors include Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Willis Barnstone, Chana Bloch, Karen Emmerich, Danielle Legros Georges, George Kalogeris, J. Kates, Alexis Levitin, Jennifer Moxley, Carl Phillips, Rebecca Seiferle, Adam Sorkin, Susan Stewart, Cole Swensen, Arthur Sze, Stephen Tapscott, Sidney Wade, Ellen Dore Watson, and David Young.