B Gourley

The Ruins: Poems by Hui Ye
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Publisher Site — Deep Vellum

This is a Chinese-English bilingual edition of Ye Hui’s first poetry collection. The poems use stark imagery with occasional instances of philosophizing and surreal statements to create a vivid and provocative set of poems.

As I’m learning Chinese, it was nice to have the original poems in Simplified Chinese script next to the English translations. While I’m not up to a reading level sufficient to taking on Modern Poetry (any poetry for that matter,) it was useful to peruse the Chinese text. I did appreciate how much vibrance the author wrings out of a relatively simple vocabulary.

I’d highly recommend this collection for poetry readers.

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The Wanderer's Song: Essential Poems (Pushkin Press Classics)

The Wanderer’s Song: Essential Poems by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Publisher Site — Pushkin Press Classics

This is a new translation of select poems of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It’s a clever and varied set of poems by one of German literature’s all-time greats, a polymath of the 18th and early 19th centuries.

It can be a challenge for a general poetry reader to relate to this work. Over two hundred years since most of these poems were composed, the collection reflects a worldview quite different from that which one finds today. That said, the translations are readable and pleasant and don’t feel strained or clunky, and the collection has instances of sublimity. Having no background in German Literature, I can’t say how true the translations are to source material, but they stood solidly as poems in their own right. The book does offer a substantial introduction by the translator for individuals who are particularly interested in the German literature, translation decisions, or the life of Goethe.

I would recommend this for poetry readers, even though casual readers may find it a bit archaic. If you like the Romantic poets, and haven’t given Goethe a try, it’s well worth the time investment.

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