The Dead Leave Us Starving With Mouths

Important Lessons: Look Carefully; Record What You See. Find A Way To Make Beauty Necessary; Find A Way To Make Necessity Beautiful.

Translation Is A Kind Of Transubstantiation; One Poem Becomes Another. You Can Choose Your Philosophy Of Translation Just As You Choose How To Live: The Free Adaptation That Sacrifices Detail To Meaning, The Strict Crib That Sacrifices Meaning To Exactitude. The Poet Moves From Life To Language, The Translator Moves From Language To Life; Both, Like The Immigrant, Try To Identify The Invisible, What's Between The Lines, The Mysterious Implications.

Trees For Example, Carry The Memory Of Rainfal. In Their Rings We Read Ancient Weather - Storms, Sunlight And Temperatures, The Growing Seasons Of Centuries. A Forest Shares A History Which Each Tree Remembers Even After It Has Been Felled.

History Is The Gradual Instant

When You Put A Tremendous Amount Of Love Into Your Work, As In Any Relationship, You Can't Know - You Can Only Hope - That What You're Offering Will In Some Way Be Received. You Shape Your Love To Artistic Demands, To The Rigors Of Your Genre. But Still, It's A Labor Of Love, And It's The Nature Of Love That You Must Give It Freely.