This part of our web site highlights Wesleyan University Press’s small and important list of modernist poetry in translation. In 1972, the press published An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Brazilian Poetry, edited by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil. In recent years, the press has published or re-issued a number of new translations of classic modernist works from French, Italian, German, Spanish and other languages. These translations bring important texts into English, sometimes for the first time, sometimes in new forms, prompting appreciation and often reconsideration of the originals. The poems presented here, en face when possible, along with excerpts from essays by the translators, invite us to consider translation as more than a linguistic operation to be evaluated in terms of accuracy or lack thereof, but also as a cultural activity of historical and artistic significance. Click on the book covers below to learn more about the poets, translators, and books in Wesleyan ‘s collection.

Guillaume Apollinaire’s Alcools translated by Donald Revell	Guillaume Apollinaire’s The Self-Dismembered Man translated by Donald Revell	Charles Baudelaire’s Flowers of Evil  translated by Keith Waldrop	Charles Baudelaire’s Paris Spleen  translated by Keith Waldrop
Anthology of 20th Century Brazilian Poetry edited by Elizabeth Bishop and Emanuel Brasil	Joõo Cabral de Melo Neto’s Selected Poetry, 1937-1990  translated by Djelal Kadir	Vicente Huidobro’s Altazor  translated by Eliot Weinberger	Aimé Cesaire’s Notebook of a Return to the Native Land translated Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith
Cesar Vallejo’s Trilce, translated by Clayton Eshleman	From the Book to the Book: An Edmond Jabés Reader translated by Rosmarie Waldrop	Lavish Absence: Recalling and Rereading Edmond Jabès by Rosmarie Waldrop; Richard Stamelman, fwd.	Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado translated by Robert Bly
Antonia Pozzi’s Breath: Poems and Letters edited & translated by Lawrence Venuti	Victor Segglen’s Stèles translated by Timothy Billins and Christopher Bush; Haun Saussy, fwd.	Blaga Dimitrova’s Because the Sea is Black tr. Heather McHugh and Nkolais Boris	Collected Poems featuring translations of Pablo Neruda, Georg Trakl, and César Vallejo James Wright
Rainer Maria Rilke’s Sonnets to Orpheus  translated by David Young	Friedrich Hölderlin’s Odes and Elegies translated by Nick Hoff	Chimeras in the Tower: Selected Poems Henrikas Radauskas translated by Jonas Zdanys	Mirroring: Selected Poems of Vladimir Holan translated by CG Hanzlicek and Dana Habova