Title: A Salute to Spanish Poetry: 100 Masterpieces from Spain and Latin America rendered into English verse
Genre: Poetry
Pages: 156
Synopsis:
Spanish poetry is not a quarter as well-known in the English-speaking world as its brilliance deserves. Partly this is due to the inadequacy of many of the books on the market in which translators not only confuse words but even miss the whole point of a poem. (Spanish, like English, is a tricky language in which many common words have multiple meanings that can only be correctly gleaned by diligently examining the context).
Furthermore, conveying a poet's thoughts and images in prose, is, to my mind, deadly. Poetry must be translated as poetry. True, it may not be possible to translate a sonnet as a sonnet, but, in my opinion, it should still possess a poetic form. For example, in translating Rosalia de Castro's "Realms of Refuge", I have given the poem a pictorial arabesque quite different from the original. But it is a form that I believe brings out the full strength and power of Rosalia's Spanish. It's a short poem. As an experiment, I initially typed it out as prose. The effect was totally destroyed!
My only regret is that copyright problems prevented me from translating any of my favorite contemporary poets such as Rafael Alberti, Octavio Paz and Pablo Neruda. But I do have a fine line-up from the early years of the 20th century, including Ruben Dario, Miguel de Unamuno and Delmira Agustini.
The earliest poet represented in my book is the wonderful Juan Ruiz (1283-1350), whose "Charms of Little Women", as inadequately translated by Longfellow, I remember studying at school. At best, the Longfellow version (which I've also reprinted in the book) is mildly amusing. He also smudges (perhaps deliberately) the point. The original is totally hilarious. "I've always preferred a small woman / to a big one or a giant," Ruiz confesses. Why? You'll have to read the book to find out.
