Bøker i The Lockert Library of Poetry in Translation-serien

These translations of the major poems of Giacomo Leopardi (1798--1837) render into modern English verse the work of a writer who is widely regarded as the greatest lyric poet in the Italian literary tradition. In spite of this reputation, and in spite of a number of nineteenth-and twentieth-century translations, Leopardi's poems have never "e;come over"e; into English in such a way as to guarantee their author a recognition comparable to that of other great European Romantic poets. By catching something of Leopardi's cadences and tonality in a version that still reads as idiomatic modern English (with an occasional Irish or American accent), Leopardi: Selected Poems should win for the Italian poet the wider appreciative audience he deserves. His themes are mutability, landscape, love; his attitude, one of unflinching realism in the face of unavoidable human loss. But the manners of the poems are a unique amalgam of philosophical toughness and the lyrically bittersweet. In a way more pure and distilled than most others in the Western tradition, these poems are truly what Matthew Arnold asked all poetry to be, a "e;criticism of life."e; The translator's aim is to convey something of the profundity and something of the sheer poetic achievement of Leopardi's inestimable Canti.

"Cantigas are lyric poems in Galician-Portuguese, a language of the Iberian Peninsula, written and performed during the 13th and early 14th centuries. They are divided into three major genres: cantigas de amigo (songs in the voice of women), cantigas de amore (courtly love songs in the voice of men), and cantigas de escarho e mal dizer (joke and insult poetry). The cantigas de amigo, thought to be inspired by popular and indigenous women's songs, represent the largest body of woman-voiced poetry in Europe, although the surviving compositions are attributed to male poets. In this book, the award-winning translator Richard Zenith has revised, expanded, and retitled a volume of cantigas he first published in 1995, in the UK only, with Carcanet Press (113 Galician Portuguese Troubadour Poems, now OP). The new book includes 122 cantigas, including several new translations, with the original text on facing pages, and a new introduction to provide background and context"--

Although seven volumes of his poetry are available in Spanish, the work of Angel Gonzalez has not been widely translated into English. This bilingual edition, introduced by the poet, presents selections from Palabra sobre palabra (Word upon Word), his definitive collection. Included are poems from Grado elemental (Elementary Grade), which won the Antonio Machado Prize for Poetry. Born in Oviedo, Spain in 1925, Angel Gonzalez published his first book in 1956 to immediate acclaim. His poetry is characterized by striking imagery and deeply personal statement that is often sad and sardonic. Of his work Gonzalez writes, "e;'Experience,' 'reality', and 'preciseness of expression' are probably...the boundaries that limit the space, on a horizontal plane, in which my poetic intentions move. Upon this plane, trying to add another dimension, I attempt to erect my creative and imaginative possibilities....In some of these poems, written and published in Spain, the result of a determined desire to bear witness will have to be sought not in what the words say but in what they imply, in the spaces of shadow, of silence of anger, or of helplessness that they discover or uncover."e;Originally published in 1977.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This is the first English translation of selected poems by one of the most important and unusual modern poets of South Korea. In contrast to the strident political protests found in the poetry of many of his contemporaries, Pak Chaesam's work is characterized by intimate portraits of place, nature, childhood, and human relationships, and by indirection, nostalgia, and reflectiveness. Often focused upon the border of this world and some other, Pak writes with a spareness of presentation but a cornucopia of imagery, meticulously exploring objective and subjective realms of existence and memory. Encouraging the reader to see and listen, and to allow the sensory to reshape the analytical, Pak's poetry opens up new realms of experience. A fellow Korean poet described Pak's poetry as being "e;the most exquisite expression of the Korean sense of han,"e; or melancholy.

Meng Chiao developed an experimental poetry of virtuosic beauty, a poetry that anticipated landmark developments in the modern Western tradition by a millennium. With the T'ang Dynasty crumbling, Meng's later work employed surrealist and symbolist techniques as it turned to a deep introspection. This title presents the English work of his poetry.

The Roman poet Propertius is best known as the writer who perfected the Latin love elegy, a technical as much as a psychological and cultural feat. Propertius has been admired for both his metrical genius and the modernity of his narrative flow. Many of the poems here pay tribute to Cynthia, Propertius's romantic obsession, but the scope of these 107 elegies is broad. Propertius's poetry offers a fascinating look into life in the Augustan age, addressing social, political, and historical subjects. A contemporary of Virgil and Horace, Propertius has influenced scores of poets--from Ovid to Housman to Pound. His poetry appears here for the first time in a dual-language edition with the translations facing the original Latin. Rendered into English by a poet who is also one of the nation's pre-eminent Propertius experts, the volume brings Propertius's difficult mix of vernacular and high literary allusion into contemporary language. Cynthia was the first. She caught me with her eyes, a foolwho had never before been touched by desires.Love cast down my look of constant pride,and he pressed on my head with his feet,until he taught me to despise chaste girls,perversely, and to live without plan.Already, it's been a whole year that the frenzy hasn't stopped,when, for all that, the gods are against me. ?

Translators Leonard Nathan and James Larson present seventy-five poems from Gunnar Ekelof's middle phase (1938-1959), a period that saw the production of his richest and most enduring poetry. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books

"A complete facing-page translation of the Tarjuman, which consists of sixty-one poems composed between 1202 and 1215 CE and published in 1215 at the earliest. The first word of the title can refer to a translator, interpreter, or biographer, on the one hand, and to a translation, interpretation, or biography on the other"--

Ana Enriqueta Teran is arguably Venezuela's finest poet. Celebrated throughout the Spanish-speaking world, she is almost unknown among anglophones. Until now only a handful of her poems have been translated into English, giving at best a diluted impression of a uniquely intense imagination. This bilingual edition reveals the power and beauty of this poet's Spanish poems through English versions of corresponding force. It invites readers to enter Teran's world--a world at once strongly Venezuelan and universally human, imbued with great beauty, sardonic humor, pitiless compassion, lucid wisdom, and joyful affirmation. Selected from several volumes of Teran's work, these poems span half a century of composition and show an extraordinary range in both form and substance. Some are written in closed forms, some in free verse. Some are carefully evocative representations of the landscapes and cityscapes that have nourished the poet's intelligence and imagination. Others are dramatic character studies. All are infused with Teran's rare sensibility and realized through language that manages to be at once graceful, urgent, and explosive. This volume is a treasure for all lovers of poetry. Deal Struck with Happiness ? How much sweetness to make right the night and this clutch of anemones near thin smooth consoling stones, stones havens of southern weather. Of a woman who watches Cepheids quaver among lightbursting mangroves. Of a woman who offers cats-eyes and clematis only, Islands, for the sake of setting right her deal struck with happiness.

Elegiac lyrics celebrating the love of boys, which the translator terms Puerilities, comprise most of the twelfth book of "The Greek Anthology". This is a translation of "Musa Puerilis" - which is a collection of short poems by great and lesser-known Greek poets, spanning hundreds of years, from ancient times to the late Christian era.

Horace has long been revered as the supreme lyric poet of the Augustan Age. In his perceptive introduction to this translation of Horace's Odes and Satires, Sidney Alexander engagingly spells out how the poet expresses values and traditions that remain unchanged in the deepest strata of Italian character two thousand years later. Horace shares with Italians of today a distinctive delight in the senses, a fundamental irony, a passion for seizing the moment, and a view of religion as aesthetic experience rather than mystical exaltation--in many ways, as Alexander puts it, Horace is the quintessential Italian. The voice we hear in this graceful and carefully annotated translation is thus one that emerges with clarity and dignity from the heart of an unchanging Latin culture. Alexander is an accomplished poet, novelist, biographer, and translator who has lived in Italy for more than thirty years. Translating a poet of such variety and vitality as Horace calls on all his literary abilities. Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus, 65-8 bce), was born the son of a freed slave in southern rural Italy and rose to become one of the most celebrated poets in Rome and a confidante of the most powerful figures of the age, including Augustus Caesar. His poetry ranges over politics, the arts, religion, nature, philosophy, and love, reflecting both his intimacy with the high affairs of the Roman Empire and his love of a simple life in the Italian countryside. Alexander translates the diverse poems of the youthful Satires and the more mature Odes with freshness, accuracy, and charm, avoiding affectations of archaism or modernism. He responds to the challenge of rendering the complexities of Latin verse in English with literary sensitivity and a fine ear for the subtleties of poetic rhythm in both languages. This is a major translation of one of the greatest of classical poets by an acknowledged master of his craft.

Poems Under Saturn is the first complete English translation of the collection that announced Paul Verlaine (1844-1896) as a poet of promise and originality, one who would come to be regarded as one of the greatest of nineteenth-century writers. This new translation, by respected contemporary poet Karl Kirchwey, faithfully renders the collection's heady mix of classical learning and earthy sensuality in poems whose rhythm and rhyme represent one of the supreme accomplishments of French verse. Restoring frequently anthologized poems to the context in which they originally appeared, Poems Under Saturn testifies to the blazing talents for which Verlaine is celebrated. The poems display precocious virtuosity, mingling the attractions of the flesh with the longings of the spirit. Greek and Hindu myth give way to intimate erotic meditations and wickedly satirical society portraits, mythological landscapes alternate with gritty narratives of mid-nineteenth century Paris, visions of happiness yield to nightmarish glimpses of deep alienation, and real and imaginary characters--including Achilles, Valmiki, Charlemagne, and Spain's baleful King Philip II--all figure as the subject matter of a supremely ambitious young poet. Poems Under Saturn presents the extraordinary devotion and intense musicality of an artist for whom poetry remained the one true passion.

This is the first comprehensive English-language collection of verse by the most celebrated Slovenian poet of modern times and one of Europe's most notable postwar poets, Edvard Kocbek (1904-1981). The selections introduce the reader to the full spectrum of Kocbek's long and distinguished career, starting with the pantheist and expressionist nature poems of his early period and continuing through the politically engaged poetry written during and after World War II, to the philosophical and metaphysical meditations of his fecund late period. Readers will be struck by the originality and freshness of Kocbek's sinewy and intense vision, rendered into fluid and idiomatic English by two experienced translators. The Slovenian texts appear on the facing pages. The opening stanza of "e;Moon with a Halo"e; ? The man beside me was killed.He had a mother who bore himand a father who made him toys,he had a brother and a playful uncleand a little girl with blond braids,he had a wooden cart and a wooden horse,a trunkful of colored dreamsand a brook where he used to fish. ?

Xue Tao (A.D. 768-831) was well known as a poet in an age when all men of learning were poets--and almost all women were illiterate. As an entertainer and official government hostess, she met, and impressed, many of the most talented and powerful figures of her day. As a maker of beautiful paper and a Taoist churchwoman, she maintained a life of independence and aesthetic sensibility. As a writer, she crrated a body of work that is by turns deeply moving, amusing, and thought-provoking. Drawing knowledgeably on a rich literary tradition, she created images that here live again for the contemporary reader of English. This bilingual edition contains about two-thirds of Xue Tao's extant poems. The translations are based on accurate readings of the originals and extensive research in both Chinese and Japanese materials. The notes at the end of the book explain allusions and place the poems in the context of medieval Chinese culture and its great literary heritage, while the opening essay introduces Xue Tao's work and describes her unusual life history.

Hebrew culture experienced a renewal in medieval Spain that produced what is arguably the most powerful body of Jewish poetry written since the Bible. Fusing elements of East and West, Arabic and Hebrew, and the particular and the universal, this verse embodies a faith that transcend the limits of language, place, and time.

One of Italy's most important contemporary poets, Erba is approachable yet complex, distinctively and artfully combining traditional and informal means in his lyrics. This edition contains the comprehensive and representative selection of Erba's poetry. With a preface, introduction, and notes, it serves as an introduction to a modern Italian poet.

Bringing together Thomas Bernhard's second and third books of poetry, this collection contains short, untitled lyrics presenting his early explorations of themes that would continue to preoccupy him in his novels, plays, and other writings - especially his intense ambivalence toward the land and people of Austria and their then-recent Nazi past.

One of South America's most celebrated contemporary poets takes us on a fantastic voyage to mysterious lands and seas, into the psyche, and to the heart of the poem itself. Night Journey is the English-language debut of the work that won Maria Negroni an Argentine National Book Award. It is a book of dreams--dreams she renders with surreal beauty that recalls the work of her compatriot Alejandra Pizarnik, with the penetrating subtlety of Borges and Calvino. In sixty-two tightly woven prose poems, Negroni deftly infuses haunting imagery with an ironic, personal spirituality. Effortlessly she navigates the nameless subject to the slopes of the Himalayas, to a bar in Buenos Aires, through war, from icy Scandinavian landscapes to the tropics, across seas, toward a cemetery in the wake of Napoleon's hearse, by train, by taxis headed in unrequested directions, past mirrors and birds, between life and death. Night Journey reflects a mastery of a traditional form while brilliantly expressing a modern condition: the multicultural, multifaceted individual, ever in motion. Displacement abounds: a "e;medieval tabard"e; where a pelvis should be, a "e;lipless grin,"e; a "e;beach severed from the ocean."e; In one poem "e;nomadic cities"e; whisk past. In another, smiling cockroaches loom in a visiting mother's eyes. Anne Twitty, whose elegant translations are accompanied by the Spanish originals, remarks in her preface that the book's "e;indomitable literary intelligence"e; subdues an unspoken terror--helplessness. Yet, as observed by the angel Gabriel, the consoling voice of wisdom, only by accepting the journey for what it is can one discover its "e;hidden splendor,"e; the "e;invisible center of the poem."e; As readers of this magnificent work will discover, this is a journey that, because its every fleeting image conjures a thousand words of fertile silence, can be savored again and again.

Goran Sonnevi is one of Sweden's most celebrated, respected, and prolific poets. This book presents the works of Sonnevi written between 1971 and 1989.

Includes poems from nearly various of Ibn Gabirol's secular and liturgical lyric genres, as well as a translation of the poet's long masterwork, "Kingdom's Crown." This book contains an introduction, which places the poetry in historical context and charts its influence through the centuries.

Features seventy poems that are among the largest and most representative offering of Wislawa Szymborska's work with particular emphasis on the period since 1967. Describing Szymborka's poetry, this book shows that her verse is marked by high seriousness, delightful inventiveness, a prodigal imagination, and enormous technical skill.