The Winged Energy of Delight: Selected Translations

By: Bly, Robert

Book Overview

"This dazzling, intensely personal compendium is a passionate feast." --Jane Hirshfield

Robert Bly had always been amazingly prescient in his choice of poets to translate. The poetry he chose supplied qualities that were lacking from the literary culture of this country. For the first time Robert Bly's brilliant translations, from several languages and spanning twenty-two poets, have been brought...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060575867
• ISBN13: 9780060575861
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 5.3" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Robert Bly, National Treasure

Bly is a giant of American literature, mostly because he never tried to be one. His translations are humble and luminous, his own poems are treasures, and his energy is always truly "winged". Read the poems in this volume aloud to your children, your animals, and anyone or anything else that will hear them with you.

Great Poetry Compilation

Having seen Robert Bly speak, I was intriqued by what he does when it'd just him and a typewriter. Well, he's doing something right. You may know the big name Poets in this book- Rumi, Ghalib, Rilke... but there are so many new and emerging (in popularity) poets here to read and enjoy. It's a stunning collection of some of Bly's best translation and a wonderful display of his mastery of the written word. Write, Bly, Write.

A Book of Wonders

Robert Bly's value and weight as a poet is remarkable. Whether he's one of your favorite American poets or not, Bly must be profusely acknowledged for his contribution to poetry in two distinct areas: as a devoted advocate of poetry itself, introducing others -particularly people who may not have called themselves lovers of poetry, to begin with- to the most exquisite form of "making language." Secondly, as a bridge to what the book has to offer, Bly has given us access to a wealth of seminal poets, encompassing an ambitious entry to poetry's history and breadth of epiphanies, through his translations. In any anthology, particularly when poetry is the matter at hand, the likelihood for disappointments is great. As the reviewer before stated, there are exclusions here that may seem inexplicable. Yet, what you must appreciate are the gems which were included since I don't believe that there's a single poem here which does not deserve its inclusion. I would have liked, of course, more poems altogether -particularly from Rilke and Neruda since Bly has translated a fair amount of their extensive works- yet I suggest that you come to this book as a generous "sampler" of great world poetry. In my case, I already own each book of translations these poems come from, so I bought it to have as a "traveling companion." In your case, you may regard it as the beginning of a friendship with some poets from different times and cultures, and as some of them speak particularly to you, you ought to get Bly's complete translations of poets. Finally, specially for those among you not familiar yet with Bly's translating style, if not a warning a certain clarification may be useful. There are fundamentally two types of great translators -of course there are many more bad ones in both camps. In one hand, there are translators whose devotion to the original is expressed by their faithful concern with conveying the original meaning, at times, at the expense of cadence or the temporal/cultural distance between poet and reader. Others, very much the case with Bly's approach, conveying the essence of a poem means taking certain liberties with the original, not as much as an absence of loyalty to the poet's words but out of the uttermost passion to have you be touched by the essence of their poetic vision. For instance, Rilke is more "American" and "contemporary" here that it may be in Stephen Mitchell's translations -which are just as stunning in their own ways. I appreciate Bly's work even when, like in the Spanish-speaking poets' case which I can read in the original, I may not agree with certain choices he's made. To read poetry is to interpret it, the ultimate gift of a great poem -maybe even a test of greatness as much as a gift- is its capacity to deeply move people in completely different ways. That's where poetry's power lies, so it'd be unfair to consider the translator any more permeable and subjective than any given reader. Come to these poems to be changed,

Terrific

... but I am mystified by the fact that some of his best translations are not in the book. "Sexual Waters" by Neruda, to take one glaring example. Some of the better Transtromer. Some of the Rilke. Smaller type with more translations would have been better, maybe--or else, a longer book. Bly's translations have been attacked, of course, as not being wholly accurate. But who cares? They are magnificent versions, wonderful poems that stand wholly on their own.

Simple, elegant introduction to Thoreau and others

Not a biographical sketch of Thoreau in a typical sense, but in a poetic one. Every word Thoreau wrote was essential, and Robert Bly has selected rich, complex prose selections from "Walden" and other writings, along with Thoreau's little-published poetry, to shine light into the soul of one of our most important American writers. Beautifully illustrated with woodcuts, a careful positioning of text on the page - simple, elegant, compelling. Bly's comments on Thoreau's writings and life, and on the contexts in which Thoreau can be seen, provide an excellent structure to his large body of work, and a wonderful guide to further reading. If we had all started our high school readings of Thoreau with this book, there would be no market for the current plethora of books on simplifying life. Our "Waldens" would be well-worn. It's all here, simply, beautifully, essentially