Ends & Odds
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Levine is careful to emphasize that the best translations serve a dual function, as a critical interpretation of the text in question, and as a work of art in a new form that reproduces or reinvents the original.
I ought to stop here as I don’t intend a reading or critique of this book, but rather an emphatic notice of its publication.
To this consistent authoritarian, a eugenicist and a fascist sympathizer who would go on to write unsingable marching tunes for the Blueshirts, the somewhat bathetic Irish version of Mussolini’s Blackshirts and Hitler’s Brownshirts, liberals regularly turn to lament the descent of democracies into social chaos, whether they see those responsible as the anarchist “infantile left” or the Hawaiian-shirted Proud Boys on the right. Over and over again, we hear cited “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world” and then, inevitably, “What rough beast … Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born.”
The notion of the poet-translator is noteworthy in the context of Vincent Katz’ new book of poems, Daffodil, which has just appeared from Knopf.
On the whole, the best work in this anthology ends up contradicting the title: poetry does not go to the movies. Instead, it uses movies as poets have used their fantasies about a beloved person to write love poems.
The two new books of poetry I’d like to talk about are Richard Milazzo’s More Fugitive than Light (Tsukuda Island Press, 2025) and Kyle Harvey’s There Without Being There (BlazeVOX, 2025), both noteworthy examples of independent publishing.
I'm still trying to narrow down the folks who I know will be brilliant; a couple more have occurred to me: Ben Goldberg (clarinet) and Derren Johnston (trumpet). We have an embarrassment of riches here in the bay area. I'll decide soon enough.
A few thoughts, mostly historical, about the use of “I” and its more refined collaborator, the editorial “we,” in U.S. poetry. I think it would be helpful for an Italian reader to start with a look at Whitman and what is presented as the “vatic” tradition in our literature.
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Alcune considerazioni, perlopiù di natura storica, sull’uso, nella poesia statunitense, dell’“io” e il suo più raffinato collaboratore, il “noi” autoriale, didattico o di commento. Credo sia utile al lettore italiano cominciare da Walt Whitman e da quella che si presenta spesso come la tradizione “profetica” nella nostra letteratura.