Rae Armantrout - Rae Armantrout

I am very grateful to Natalia Carbajosa for her excellent translations of my poems and for her extremely substantive and insightful introduction. Robert Frost famously said, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” We all know what he means. (We’ve probably seen it happen). Poetry is more difficult to translate than prose for a number of reasons: its sound is an important part of its meaning; ambiguities and double meanings which may be important in the original text can be almost impossible to carry into another language; and cultural differences can easily obscure the connotations of a word choice or the tone of an expression. My poetry, which has in truth been called difficult by some American readers, may present particular challenges for a translator. For one thing, as Natalia notes (quoting me) in her intro, my poems are quite condensed and sometimes depend on the simultaneous activation of different possible interpretations. In addition, as she also suggests, I tend to use a variety, almost a cacophony, of imagined voices implicated in various tones and types of diction. Natalia has been able to overcome these challenges not only because she is fluent in English, but because she is a poet herself—and one who happens to share a number of my interests from cosmology and quantum physics to the representation of gender in popular culture. As she says, we engaged in an intense and productive email conversation about the poems and their possible translations. She flatters me when she asserts that I speak Spanish. I took Spanish classes in school and can read passably well with a dictionary in hand, but I am far from fluent. I have understood just enough to gain an enhanced appreciation of the interesting complexities translation projects involve.

I am grateful and amazed, even humbled by the time and dedication Natalia has put into understanding not only the poems but the context from which they arise. This has involved studying my personal background as well a cultural and artistic milieu spanning at least forty years of American history. Her introduction will leave the reader with a good sense of the movements and trends in U.S poetry during this time, particularly the development of language poetry and its relation to its historical and cultural moment. Natalia's introduction has even shown me, as a good critic can, things about my own work of which I was, perhaps, insufficiently aware. (Here I am thinking of the way she traces my mother's influence—however ambivalently experienced—through my eleven books in ways that put them—and me— in conversation with feminist theory).

I like to hope that, because of the generosity of Natalia Carbajosa and Carme Manuel, my poetry will be heard in new and perhaps surprising ways by readers in Spain.

Agradecimientos de la traductora

Quisiera agradecer la ayuda prestada a las personas que, directa o indirectamente, han contribuido a la elaboración o mejora de este volumen: a la funcionaria de Relaciones Internacionales Val Hunter y el profesor Daniel Laqua, ambos de la Northumbria University en Newcastle, y al profesor Adam Sharman, de la University of Nottingham, por facilitarme el acceso a las bibliotecas de Humanidades de sus respectivas instituciones.

A Beatriz Marín Noriega, jefa del Servicio de Relaciones Internacionales de mi centro de trabajo (la Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena), por apoyar mi participación en los programas de movilidad que me llevaron a esas universidades. Al científico y escritor Juan José Gómez Cadenas por aclararme algunas dudas, insalvables para mí, sobre la física.

Y a la propia Rae Armantrout, siempre presta a responder con paciencia y precisión a los múltiples mensajes con que la estuve asaltando durante los meses anteriores a la publicación del libro.

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