Blog Post 7

I was impressed by the structure of the argument in Cavanagh’s essay and how she used the poems both to present translation problems and the text of the poem as an argument in and of themselves. That is, she used Bishop’s villanelle both to bring up the poetic concept of the art of losing as well as discuss the translation problems of form and rhyme. I haven’t read any of Cavanagh’s poetry before, but I enjoyed her translations in the paper, especially ‘Birthday.’ It was a perfect poem to talk about problems of fidelity with because of the impossibility or fruitlessness of translating that poem literally, but it also seemed like an outside case. Of course, maybe all poems are outside cases.

Emerson Archer