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.
Andre Naffis-SahelyI 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.
Andre Naffis-SahelyIn a sense, I never got over Robert Lowell's History. A flawed, infinitely brilliant project I never tire of going back to. It's a modern Inferno, where Lowell plays both Dante and Virgil, guiding us through dozens of illuminating, bitter episodes from human history, all the while managing to hold a mirror to our confused hominid face as it squints at eternity and fails to grasp any of it.
Andre Naffis-SahelySome of my colleagues are surprised by how little personal interaction I've had with "my" authors, but I don't translate to go fishing for friends. Part of me suspects that they wouldn't like me, or that I wouldn't like them, which would inevitably get in the way of the mission. None of the theory built around translation matters to me anyway: much of the process, I find, is intuitive.
Andre Naffis-Sahely