Category: Translations

The concept of beauty is defined and supplemented by the concept of catharsis as the apogee of the struggle with, and mastery of, human passions and sufferings. Thus, a beautiful form, like an exquisite amphora, is filled with content, the flaming wine of feeling.

  As a poet, I’ve always loved to read, write and translate the love poem, especially the love poem of mixed tone:  the one both certain of the attraction and uncertain of the commitment, or uncertain of mutual commitment; the one both fierce and forgiving, or, if not exactly forgiving, wonderfully dismissive when the brave move of separation becomes inevitable. 

Perhaps it is best to approach beauty with humility. (I say this even while having to admit that beauty often catches us unawares, as when I first heard Mahler’s Eighth Symphony or, as one who had never been an admirer of tapestries, came upon some by William Morris on display at the Cincinnati Art Museum one afternoon and was reduced to tears.) Great works of art can surprise us in this way.

Muslim by birth, Waberi’s themes include living a simple life based on meditation and spirituality, the nomadic life, Arabic language and culture, religious tolerance as opposed to extremism, and Djibouti’s harsh climate and civil wars. In recognition for his commitment to the values of multiculturalism and linguistic, ethnic, and religious diversity, he was awarded the 2016 Words to Change Prize.

Andrey Guschin identifies himself as a “neo-archeist” poet, and the primary attraction to me as a translator of his lively and inventive formal verses was that what I view as a resurgence of the use of archaism and archaic words in contemporary American poetry, may yield for the work a readership in English.