Periplus: Poetry in Translation

by Daniel Weissbort (Editor), Arvind K. Mehrotra (Editor)

"the action of sailing round, a voyage (or journey) around a coastline." The translations and commentaries (or travelogues) in this collection represent such a journey. World literature, geographically, ethnically, and historically, is treated as a splendid whole, with contributions
by the late A.K. Ramanujan, reworking poems of the fourteenth-century Kashmiri saint-poet Lalla, and Weissbort's and Musial's collaborative translations of the ultra-radical post-War Polish poet Miron Bialoszweski. There are ancient Korean shaman songs and Arun Kolatkar's modern versions of his own
Marathi poems. There is a substantial selection by the great revolutionary Hungarian poet Attila Jozsef, as well as translations by the British poet Jon Silkin of poems by the young Japanese writer Toshiko Fujioka. The pioneering work in translation studies of the late James S. Holmes is honored,
and Nobel Laureate Joseph Brodsky discourses on "Esthetics, the Mother of Ethics." In short, it is a single journey that is celebrated in Periplus embracing the literary traditions of East--in particular of the Indian subcontinent--and West.

204 pages, Hardcover

First published January 20, 1994

About the author

Daniel Weissbort was educated at Cambridge, where he was a History Exhibitioner. In 1965, with Ted Hughes, he founded the magazine Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT) which he edited for almost forty years. He also directed the Translation Workshop and MFA Program in Translation at the University of Iowa for over thirty years. In addition to his translations, Daniel Weissbort published many collections of his own poetry, co-edited a historical reader in translation theory, and wrote a book about the translator Ted Hughes.