Full Description
How a passion for translation fueled the development of a great American poet_x000D_
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So Much Secret Labor is a window into the work of the great American poet, James Wright, whose love of languages and quest for the "true imagination" helped transform American poetry. The book draws on memoir, archival research, interviews, letters, and previous unpublished journal excerpts, presenting a scrupulous and intimate reading of Wright's work and the translations he insisted were as redemptive in his life as they were crucial to his poetics. At its center is a selection of Wright's translations, both from German and Spanish: poems by Trakl, Rilke, Heine, Vallejo, Lorca, and Neruda, among others, including draft versions discovered among his collected papers that have never been published. It also provides an important assessment of the little known formative influence of German poetry on Wright's own poems. Wright's literary relationship with another great mid-century American poet, Robert Bly, is featured here in a portfolio of unpublished letters, typescripts and holographs. These tell the story of their ardentfriendship and earliest translation collaborations, and situates them in the history of the emergence of poetry of the "true imagination" that they were beginning to explore at that time.
Contents
Author's Note
Preface: James Wright and Translations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: James Wright and the Sound of the Human Voice
Among Other Voices: A Chronology
First Translations
A Solitary Apprenticeship: The German Poets
Selected German Translations
A Fine Weave of Voices: Translation, Whitman and James Wright's New Style
Here Is Nourishment: The Spanish Poets
Selected Spanish Translations
Georg Trakl's "Grodek" Translated by James Wright and Robert Bly
A Portfolio
Afterword
Notes
James Wright As Translator: A Selected Bibliography
