Translators Talk About the Poet

 Each word seemed to be correct, but when I read the poem in French, it was as if everything 'leaked', it all went down the drain – there’s no poem. Which is why I had to go back to the original and calmly, patiently, look for this 'tiny hole' the poetry had leaked out through and plug it quickly,

Despite working primarily with prose, I immediately resonated with this quote. When translating Japanese, there's always some small bit of nuance I feel is seeping out in even the simplest of sentences because if I were to translate them literally to capture that nuance, it would then read terribly stilted.

I can only imagine this goes doubly for poetry, Cavanagh discusses in The Art of Losing.

Back to Szymborska, I also found myself quite curious as to what this poem about buttons could be. For the translator to praise it that heavily, so much so that it changed her worldview, it must be quite the piece.

-Evan