Against Translation (Phoenix Poets)

Against Translation (Phoenix Poets)

by Alan Shapiro (Author)

Synopsis

We often ask ourselves what gets lost in translation--not just between languages, but in the everyday trade-offs between what we experience and what we are able to say about it. But the visionary poems of this collection invite us to consider: what is loss, in translation? Writing at the limits of language--where the signs loosen, fray, and drift --Alan Shapiro probes the startling complexity of how we confront absence and the ephemeral, the heartbreak of what once wasn't yet and now is no longer, of what (like racial prejudice and historical atrocity) is omnipresent and elusive. Through poems that are fine-grained and often quiet, Shapiro tells of subtle bereavements: a young boy is shamed for the first time for looking girly ; an ailing old man struggles to visit his wife in a nursing home; or a woman dying of cancer watches her friends enjoy themselves in her absence. Throughout, this collection traverses rather than condemns the imperfect language of loss--moving against the current in the direction of the utterly ineffable.

$22.23

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 96
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 08 Mar 2019

ISBN 10: 022661350X
ISBN 13: 9780226613505

Author Bio
Alan Shapiro has published many books, including Reel to Reel, which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is the William R. Kenan Jr. Distinguished Professor of English and comparative literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.