Into English: Poems, Translations, Commentaries

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

Into English allows readers an extraordinary opportunity to experience the process and artistry of translating poetry. Editors Martha Collins and Kevin Prufer invited twenty-five contributors, all of them translators and most of them also poets, to select one poem in another language and three English translations of it, and then to provide an essay about the challenges and rewards of translating it. This anthology offers the original poem and the translations side by side, so readers can compare the translations for themselves.

The original poems are from across time and around the world. The poets include Sappho, San Juan de la Cruz, Basho, Rilke, Akhmatova, García 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, Anne Carson, Ruth Fainlight, David Hinton, Rosemary Lloyd, Khaled Mattawa, and W. S. Merwin. Into English becomes a chorus in celebration of international poetry and translation.