Volume 26, Number 17 · November 8, 1979
Life Studies
By John Bayley
Vasko Popa: Collected Poems 1943-1976
translated by Anne Pennington, with an introduction by Ted Hughes. The Persea Series of Poetry in Translation, general editor Daniel Weissbort
Persea Books, 194 pp., $5.95 (paper)
Translating a good poet into poetry is a thankless task. When you have finished he will not look so good and, worse, he may seem to approximate to the manner of a number of other poets, whether foreign or writing in English. This loss of absolute individuality is bound to flatten in its turn the reader's powers of response, and give him nagging doubts about whether the poetry possessed it in the first place. Philip Larkin's straightforwardly insular objection to what is claimed to be distinguished foreign poetry is that it sounds so like the mediocre stuff that is always being produced at home. The 'once only' quality has vanished.
Review, 2356 words
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