Martha Collins

A unique anthology that illuminates the history and the art of translating poetry into English Into English presents poems, translations, and commentaries in an extraordinary format for readers to experience the intricacy and artistry of poetry in translation. Editors Martha Collins and Kevin Prufer invited twenty-five contributors, all of whom are translators and most of whom are also poets, to select one poem in another language and three English translations of it and provide an essay about the challenges of translating it. This wide-format anthology offers the original poem side by side with the translations, so readers can compare several different ways a poem can be rendered into English. Organized chronologically, the anthology opens with a poem in ancient Greek by Sappho beside translations by Anne Carson, Willis Barnstone, and Mary Barnard, followed by an essay by Karen Emmerich. The original poems are by poets from across time and from around the world, including Basho, Rilke, Akhmatova, Garc�a Lorca, Szymborska, Amichai, and Adonis. The languages represented are many, from Latin to Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Haitian Creole. More than seventy translators are included, among them Robert Bly, Ruth Fainlight, David Hinton, Rosemary Lloyd, Khaled Mattawa, and W. S. Merwin.Into English becomes a chorus in celebration of world poetry and translation—what George Kalogeris, quoting Virgil, describes as “song replying to song replying to song.” Contributors include Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Willis Barnstone, Chana Bloch, Karen Emmerich, Danielle Legros Georges, George Kalogeris, J. Kates, Alexis Levitin, Jennifer Moxley, Carl Phillips, Rebecca Seiferle, Adam Sorkin, Susan Stewart, Cole Swensen, Arthur Sze, Stephen Tapscott, Sidney Wade, Ellen Dor� Watson, and David Young.

Poems, Translations, Commentaries

Into English

A collection of poetic works is inspired by the 1909 lynching of two men--one black, the other white--in Cairo, Illinois, an event that was watched by the writer's fruit-seller father and ten thousand other witnesses, in a volume that draws on period news stories, census accounts, and photographs. Original.

Poems

Blue Front

Because What Else Could I Do is a sequence of fifty-five untitled short poems, almost all of them addressed to the poet’s husband during the six months following his sudden and shocking death. Perhaps best known for her historical explorations of sociopolitical issues, Martha Collins did not originally intend to publish these poems. But while they are intensely personal, they make use of all of her poetic attention and skills. Spare, fragmented, musical even in their most heartbreaking moments, the poems allow the reader to share both an intimate expression the poet’s grief and a moving record of her attempt to comprehend the events surrounding her loss.

Because What Else Could I Do

Celia Bland

For her five volumes of poetry over the course of her career, Jane Cooper (1924–2007) was deeply admired by her contemporaries, and teaching at Sarah Lawrence College for nearly forty years, she served as a mentor to many aspiring poets. Her elegant, honest, and emotionally and formally precise poems, often addressing the challenges of women’s lives—especially the lives of women in the arts—continue to resonate with a new generation of readers. Martha Collins and Celia Bland bring together several decades’ worth of essential writing on Cooper’s poetry. While some pieces offer close examination of Cooper’s process or thoughtful consideration of the craft of a single poem, the volume also features reviews of her collections, including a previously unpublished piece on her first book, The Weather of Six Mornings (1969), by James Wright, a lifelong champion of her work. Marie Howe, Jan Heller Levi, and Thomas Lux, among others, share personal remembrances of Cooper as a teacher, colleague, and inspiration. L. R. Berger’s moving tribute to Cooper’s final days closes the volume. This book has much to offer for both readers who already love Cooper’s work and new readers, especially among younger poets, just discovering her enduring poems.

A Radiance of Attention

Jane Cooper

Day unto Day

"White Papers is a series of untitled poems that explore race from a variety of personal, historical, and cultural perspectives, questioning what it means to be "white" in a multi-racial society."--Publisher's website.

White papers

“In this luminous companion to Day unto Day” the acclaimed poet seeks to reconcile beauty and horror, joy and mortality, the personal and the political (Publishers Weekly, starred review). Like its predecessor, Day unto Day, this new collection presents six sequences, each written in one month a year, over the course of six years. It brings together the natural and the all-too-human; red-winged blackbirds and the death of a friend; the green leaves of a maple tree and drones overseas; a February spent in Italy and the persistence of anti-immigrant rhetoric. Dissonance is a permanent state, Collins suggests, something to be occupied rather than solved. And so this collection lives in the space between these seeming contrasts—and in the space between stanzas, sequences, days, and months. These poems speak to and revisit each other, borrowing a word or a line before turning it on end.

Night Unto Night

Kevin Prufer

A unique anthology that illuminates the history and the art of translating poetry into English Into English presents poems, translations, and commentaries in an extraordinary format for readers to experience the intricacy and artistry of poetry in translation. Editors Martha Collins and Kevin Prufer invited twenty-five contributors, all of whom are translators and most of whom are also poets, to select one poem in another language and three English translations of it and provide an essay about the challenges of translating it. This wide-format anthology offers the original poem side by side with the translations, so readers can compare several different ways a poem can be rendered into English. Organized chronologically, the anthology opens with a poem in ancient Greek by Sappho beside translations by Anne Carson, Willis Barnstone, and Mary Barnard, followed by an essay by Karen Emmerich. The original poems are by poets from across time and from around the world, including Basho, Rilke, Akhmatova, García Lorca, Szymborska, Amichai, and Adonis. The languages represented are many, from Latin to Chinese, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Hebrew, Arabic, and Haitian Creole. More than seventy translators are included, among them Robert Bly, Ruth Fainlight, David Hinton, Rosemary Lloyd, Khaled Mattawa, and W. S. Merwin. Into English becomes a chorus in celebration of world poetry and translation—what George Kalogeris, quoting Virgil, describes as “song replying to song replying to song.” Contributors include Kareem James Abu-Zeid, Willis Barnstone, Chana Bloch, Karen Emmerich, Danielle Legros Georges, George Kalogeris, J. Kates, Alexis Levitin, Jennifer Moxley, Carl Phillips, Rebecca Seiferle, Adam Sorkin, Susan Stewart, Cole Swensen, Arthur Sze, Stephen Tapscott, Sidney Wade, Ellen Doré Watson, and David Young.

Martin Rock

Poetry. Literary Nonfiction. Women's Studies. Edited by Martha Collins, Kevin Prufer, and Martin Rock. "Catherine Breese Davis fills an important but unsung niche in the tradition of women's poetry in the U.S. and now unsung no more. The editors of this book have given us a brilliant selection from Davis's poems, combined with illuminating writings about her work and life. This volume is a true labor of love, a priceless introduction to a lucid, poignant, and unflinching poet." Annie Finch "I have admired Catherine Davis's exquisitely sculpted lyrics for over forty years. But it has been futile to recommend her work to others because it has been nearly impossible for anyone to find the poems, most of which were never published in book form. What a gift to have this lost poet restored to us." Dana Goia"

On the Life and Work of an American Master

Catherine Breese Davis

A collection of poems in which the author draws on dream and world, image and idea, and sound and sense to describe a vision of open, living space

Martha Collins

Books

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