This Is How: Essays on Poetry and Translation

This Is How collects essays by poet and translator Ilya Kaminsky examining the intersections of poetry, translation, and the immigrant experience. The pieces range from close readings of translated works to broader meditations on language and literary inheritance. Kaminsky analyzes poets including Marina Tsvetaeva, Paul Celan, Federico García Lorca and others while exploring translation challenges and discussing how poets influence one another across languages and cultures. The essays incorporate reflections on his own background as a Ukrainian-born poet writing in English. The essays consider both specific translation examples and larger questions about poetry's role in preserving cultural memory and creating connection between peoples. Kaminsky investigates how translated poems move between private and public spheres, carrying personal and political meaning across borders. The collection highlights poetry's power to transcend boundaries of language, culture and time while revealing the translator's role as both interpreter and creator. Through these essays, translation emerges as an act of attention, imagination and radical empathy.

There are not enough internet reviews to create a summary of this book. Instead, here is a summary of reviews of Ilya Kaminsky's overall work: Readers connect deeply with Kaminsky's vivid imagery and his ability to transform political themes into personal narratives. On Goodreads, "Deaf Republic" maintains a 4.31/5 rating from over 8,000 readers, while "Dancing in Odessa" holds 4.29/5 from 2,500+ readers. What readers liked: - Unique perspective on silence and resistance - Powerful metaphors and sensory details - Integration of sign language into poetry - Accessibility despite complex themes From reader reviews: "His command of English as a second language creates fresh, unexpected metaphors" - Goodreads "The way he writes about silence makes you hear things differently" - Amazon What readers disliked: - Some found the narrative structure disjointed - Several mentioned difficulty following character relationships - A few noted the political allegories felt heavy-handed Amazon ratings average 4.7/5 across both books. Professional review aggregator BookMarks shows 27 positive reviews, 3 mixed, and 0 negative for "Deaf Republic."

The Craft of Translation by Burton Raffel A translator examines the technical, linguistic, and artistic challenges of rendering poetry across languages while drawing from his experiences with Old English, Indonesian, and French works.

Why Translation Matters by Edith Grossman A master translator of Spanish literature explores translation as a crucial element in cultural exchange and literary evolution through examples from Cervantes to García Márquez.

Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei by Eliot Weinberger Multiple translations of a single Chinese poem reveal how each version creates new meanings and interpretations while illuminating the essence of poetic translation.

The Craft of Translation by John Biguenet, Rainer Schulte Working translators share their methods and insights for approaching literary translation through case studies and practical examples from their own work.

After Babel by George Steiner A comprehensive examination of translation theory connects language, culture, and meaning through analysis of major works in world literature and their translations.

🖋️ Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa, Ukraine, and lost most of his hearing at age four due to a misdiagnosed case of mumps - an experience that deeply influences his approach to language and translation 📚 The essays explore not just translation between languages, but also between experiences, senses, and ways of perceiving the world - what Kaminsky calls "the translation of silence" ✍️ Many of the discussions in the book draw from Kaminsky's experience of learning English as a teenage refugee in the United States, where he began writing poetry in his new language 🌏 The book examines works from a remarkable range of poets and languages, including Marina Tsvetaeva (Russian), Paul Celan (German), Osip Mandelstam (Russian), and Federico García Lorca (Spanish) 🎭 Kaminsky often focuses on poets who wrote under political pressure or persecution, exploring how their circumstances affected their use of language and metaphor