Literary editors are becoming increasingly vigilant over AI-generated work, yet translation might be the literary endeavor most vulnerable to artificial take-over. While an AI model may learn how to aptly translate the correct meaning of words and sentences, there is a deeper, ineffable element to poetry that requires true human emotion to preserve and convey from one language to another. Bilingual poets and translators have the particular gift of bridging cultures either by translating work with the original sentiment it intended, or by bringing their own unique sensitivity to weaving mother tongues into poetry in ways that elevate the reader into a foreign culture rather than alienating them.

The following is a list of poetry collections that range from translation to using English as a second language in order to help readers access a foreign culture via poetry.

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Gold by Rumi,

translated by Haleh Liza Gafori

(New York Review of Books, 2022)

Though not the first poet to translate Rumi’s poetry, Gafori’s translations stand out for simple reason that she brings all of herself to the process, not with the arrogance of a male poet showing off his knowledge of a foreign language, but with intentional abandon as a means to honor Rumi’s poetry. Gafori is not only a poet, but also a singer and performer with the ability to aptly capture the rhythm of Rumi’s words, considering that the background of Rumis’s work was spoken and publicly performed poetry. Her word choices are intentional not only towards conveying the message, but also towards mimicking the musical cadence of the Farsi language in stanzas like “From its gnarls and knots / my flames unfurl a honeyed musk / of amber, fruit, and flower.”

Gafori’s skill at amplifying her cultural background through female sensitivity transforms Gold from a collection of translated works into something that artistically belongs both to her and to Rumi, in a sense redefining translation as collaboration in communicating universal poetic concepts between two cultures.

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To The Cypress Again and Again: Tribute to Salvador Espriu

by Cyrus Cassells

(Texas A&M University Press, 2023)

With this hybrid collection of translation and original work, Cassells highlights translation as a function of love for someone’s work. Rather than treating it like an executive exercise focused on moving words from one language to another, Cassells shows how genuine interest and passion for the work translated can access a deeper understanding of that work’s purpose. Espriu’s original poetry was written in Catalan, a language forbidden under Franco’s regime after the Spanish Civil War. Armed with lived experience within contemporary systems built on oppression, Cassells makes language choices that shape the tone of the translation as nothing other than triumphant and honors Espriu’s triumph of poetry over Franco’s oppression by giving it new life in the English language.

Cassells’ connection with Espriu’s work is further explored in original poetry he adds to the collection in order to create a hybrid experience that expands the purpose of translation into genuine tribute.

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Asian American Translations

by Molly Zhu

(Cordella Press, 2023)

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What stands out most about this collection is the feeling that the speaker of the pieces seems to exist in a liminal in-betweenness with all the things that get lost in translation. The poems blend English and Chinese language elements not because the speaker isn’t fully expert at wielding the English language, but because the well-timed Chinese insertions bring the reader closer to the familial frequency Zhu’s poems sound off on. This is how the collection reproduces a full sense of rituals and tradition and rather than struggling to be fully relatable, it welcomes the readers into a new and foreign environment with the warmth of a family home.

My personal pick of highlights are the poems translated into Chinese by Zhu’s brother, in a surprising and unique twist that gives readers the opportunity to get lost in a poetic feedback loop.

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flower / وردة

by Nardine Taleb

(Passengers Press, 2023)

The bilingual state of being comes through in this poetry collection as a struggle to reconcile two identities. Taleb explores the relationship with English as a second language by analyzing the speaker’s desire to be assimilated into a chosen culture juxtaposed with her need to hold on to the identity of origin. The poems are permeated with a sense of prayer that the speaker finds difficult to express in the context of America, not for lack of language, but for lack of the specific feeling that backs the same sense of prayer in the Arabic language. Taleb explores the speaker’s sense of alienation as she acknowledges that the English language as she’s experiencing it doesn’t serve the same purpose in the naming of the world as her mother tongue. Throughout the collection, every poem embodies a strong sense of duality that only a bilingual brain can bring to the page.

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Saltwater Demands a Psalm

by Kweku Abimbola

(Graywolf Press, 2023)

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In this profoundly lyrical collection the use of language transcends the basic purpose of delivering a message and becomes an active participant to the Black experience. Abimbola isn’t concerned with bridging the cultural duality of that experience in Africa versus the US, he simply lets the two exist at the same time both beautiful and ugly, disjointed, as if slowly uncovering a wound dressed in language. The English language becomes merely a setting where the African language is welcome to take center stage, yet both languages absolutely indispensable to the final show. The collection is punctuated with name calligrams that bring forth a devotional feeling, giving them a sense of being both poem and incantation.

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guillotine

by Eduardo C. Corral

(Graywolf Press, 2020)

The best way I can describe the tone of this collection is transition. Corral makes his poems cross physical borders, cultural borders, language borders as the reader is almost witnessing in real time how these transitions shape the message and the language of the poem. The speakers of these poems embody a variety of characters, which only enhances the opportunity to play with different expressions of both the English and the Spanish language. Corral is a bilingual writer with a unique grasp of code-switching and how to gauge the safety of an audience in order to switch. guillotine makes deliberate and constant use of code-switching, creating a poetic world in which both languages take space in communicating without insinuating that either language is imperfect or insufficient. By blending two languages and seamlessly switching between the two, Corral welcomes readers into the safe space of a foreign culture, giving them access to a more intimate understanding of the heavy topics the poems explore.

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