Poem of the Week

There’s a cult—relatively unknown but actually quite numerous—of adherents to the intentionally untranslatable, founded upon the principle that if it could be translated, why write it? In short, if something can be translated, that’s proof that the writer is working, not in language, but rather in idea, concept, image, etc., and therefore the work may well lack the immediacy for which many poets strive. This is especially true of titles. There are many of us who only translate books with untranslatable titles—otherwise you’ve got nothing to start with.