I can't quite see the point of poems like "Wittgenstein Goes for a Walk with A Hawk in Sherwood Forest." I know they're trying to be clever, but they're not.

As Trevor Noah recently quipped, the US appears ready to crown its first African dictator: Donald Trump.

I'm of the opinion that poetry is always political, and cannot help but be so, regardless of the poet's intent, given that refusing to deal in politics is in itself a political act.

Regardless of whether the authors I've translated have been "dead and canonized," or "living and established," or even simply "emerging," I must put myself to the same, old test: "can I do their texts justice?" I've translated twenty-one books, and except for three commissions, I "hand-picked" all my authors on the basis of whether my own peculiar idiosyncrasies would complement their own.

Dealing with politically-engaged writers of color like Abdellatif Laâbi and Rashid Boudjedra - who ran away from school aged sixteen to fight against the French in the Algerian war - first requires convincing an editor to take a chance on them, which very few like to do these days.

Meanwhile, the disgruntled "natives" of the West remain empty-handed and keep baying for blood, stuck on the caboose of the train, like Bob Dylan used to sing. Despair will always be a merchandize so long as we refuse to confront these lies head-on.

I've heard of translators collaborating closely with their authors, sometimes even living with them for a while, but that's not me.