FEATURE

Translating Gary Snyder

In his native land, Gary Snyder is that rare thing: a popular poet with a broad audience. His books are in print, his work is taught in American schools, and his talks and performances attract and weave together a community of interested readers, much as his own writing weaves together English lyric poetry, the traditions of East Asia, Native America, radical ecology and the landscape of the American West. His concerns have always been transnational, but how does he sound to the rest of the world?

Translating Gary Snyder brings together a dozen poems translated into French, Spanish, Czech, Swedish, Brazilian Portuguese, ­Russian, Japanese, and Italian, selected from five decades of the poet’s work ­including ­Danger on Peaks (2004), chosen from recent or as-yet unpublished collections. Translators Nacho Fernández, Luboš Snížek, Reidar Ekner, Shigeyoshi Hara, Luci Collin, Irina Dyatlovskaya, Chiara D’Ottavi – poets, journalists, teachers actively working with the poet – offer new essays on the challenges of translating Snyder’s art into their own language and culture. Francesca Mengoni offers a blending of text by Snyder and St. Francis of Assisi.

 

Paul Kahn

Hitting a bear in the ass with a handful of rice

POEMS & TRANSLATIONS

Olivier Delbard – French

Le joueur de flûte bossu / The Hump-backed Flute Player

Nacho Fernández – Spanish / Luboš Snížek – Czech

este poema es para oso / Tahle báseň je pro medvěda / this poem is for bear

Nacho Fernández – Spanish / Luboš Snížek – Czech / Reidar Ekner – Swedish

Bajo las colinas cerca del río Morava / Pod kopci u řeky Moravy / Nedanför åsarna nära Morava-floden / Under the Hills Near the Morava River  (Flash Plug-In required)

Luci Collin – Portuguese / Irina Dyatlovskaya – Russian

Riprap / Брусчатка / Riprap

Irina Dyatlovskaya – Russian

Сойдя с тропы/Свой путь / Off the trail

Shigeyoshi Hara – Japanese

Hyoga no bourei tachi / from Glacier Ghosts

Luci Collin – Portuguese

Bem No Rastro / Right in the trail

Chiara D’Ottavi – Italian

Per i bambini / For the Children
Il dopo Bamiyan / After Bamiyan

Francesca Mengoni

Cantici / Canticles

ESSAYS

Irina Dyatlovskaya

Reading is a private act …

Luboš Snížek

Why can we Czechs understand Gary Snyder poetry 

Shigeyoshi Hara

How to translate phanopoeia:
Gary Snyder’s poetry into Japanese

Chiara D’Ottavi

A song of pure love,
For the Children of the Earth

Nacho Fernández

Bones and Bears:
Notes on the Translation of Two Poems by Gary Snyder

Luci Collin

Snyder in Portuguese –
Language, Culture and Context

Reidar Ekner

The Sense of a Voice – Transmission Possible?
Framtida öde / Some Fate
Utan skugga / No Shadow