zodiac11 May 2004

Twentieth-century, maybe some nineteenth as well.

It's hard for me to say, because of course there is and always will be a high market value for good translations of old poems. And besides that, pretty much my only experience with untranslated poetry is as a stoned undergrad Spanish major about three years ago. I did a lot of work with Nicolas Guillen, Armonia Somers (not a poet), Luis Garcia Montero, Juana de Ibarbourou, Emilia Bernal, Alfonsina Storni, and some assorted Catalan and Spanish speakers whose names escape me now, but I find I've forgotten almost all of it. When I looked into translating at the time, I found there were no English translations of any of the above (besides Langston Hughes' famous translation of Guillen,) though there is some interest in it in America. But again, I can't say. I would recommend you find something that appeals to a modern aesthetic, something a little ambiguous, showing more than telling, etc etc etc. There's stuff like that going back ages in any language. That's what would interest me, at any rate.

PS-Do you know a poem that begins something like:
"Traeme otra copa
y veremos"?
I've been looking for it all day.