Translations

Before his decisive move to writing in German after 1948, Paul Celan (1920—1970), who grew up in Bukovina, wrote poetry in Romanian; work from 1945 to 1947 is here collected in Romanian Poems. With facing-page translations by Julian Semilian and Sanda Agalidi, these 17 poems and prose pieces alter Celan's oeuvre, and are essential to it. (Green Integer [Consortium, dist.], $9.95 paper 80p ISBN 1-892295-41-5; June)

Long overdue for reconsideration is Hothouses: Poems 1889, the book of poems published in French by Belgian lawyer Maurice Maeterlinck (1862—1949), who later went on the win a Nobel Prize. The facing-page translations by Richard Howard are the first complete set in more than 100 years, accompanied by seven Georges Minne woodcuts that show "those faraway nights/ so long dead to memory that their/ gradually focused return/ withers the green soul of hopes to come." (Princeton Univ., $32.50 128p ISBN 0-691-08837-3; $9.95 paper -08838-1; June)

A cornerstone of Bill Moyers's PBS poetry special, El Salvador poet Claribel Alegría has spent several semesters in the U.S. as a visiting writer, and now offers The Soltando Amarras/ Casting Off, a new collection of poems in Spanish, with en-face translations by Margaret Sayers Peden: "The world isn't ending,/ it's changing,/ Cassandra,/ it's changing." (Curbstone, $13.95 paper 112p ISBN 1-880684-98-5; June)

"No/ this is not a time for dreams/ A dream is indecent/ and useless/ as the poet's tears," writes Abdellatif Laâbi in a stanza revealing one of the many facets of The World's Embrace: Selected Poems. Translated by various hands, and edited with an introduction by Victor Reinking and a foreword by Ammiel Alcalay, this book selects from six collections by the Moroccan poet and novelist, who has lived in Paris since 1985, following a term as a political prisoner. (City Lights, $16.95 paper 184p ISBN 0-87286-413-8; June)

A great scholar and loyal friend to Walter Benjamin (who is addressed here), Gershom Scholem wrote strong poetry. Presented in the original German with excellent facing-pace translations from PEN translation award-winner Richard Sieburth and with an introduction by Reed College professor of Judaic Studies and Humanities Steven M. Wasserstrom, the 21 poems of The Fullness of Time ask "Lord, grant that he may awake/ whom your absence has erased." (Ibis [SPD, dist.], $13.95 paper 160p ISBN 965-90125-3-5; June)

With a preface by Bei Dao and translations from the Russian by Peter France, Child-and-Rose presents poet Gennady Aygi's own selection from his work. Now living in Moscow and nearly a septuagenarian, Aygi was born in the Chuvash Autonomous Republic, and writes with an imagistic compression and real time candor that recalls Robert Creeley, but is utterly unique. (New Directions, $14.95 paper 192p ISBN 0-8112-1536-9; June)

"Living in Lebanon, I wouldn't have written books; I would have had children cooked" writes Parisian ex-pat Vénus Khoury-Ghata as a partial answer to why she writes in French. She Says, translated and introduced by Marilyn Hacker, comprises two poem sequences, "She Says/ Elle Dit" and "Words/ Les Mots," presented with French en face, while "Their voices alone pass through all obstacles." (Graywolf, $15 paper 184p ISBN 1-55595-383-3; June)

The indefatigable W.S. Merwin, who won the Howard S. Landon Award from the Academy of American Poets for last year's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, here moves into 20th-century French, with Transparence of the World, a selection of poems by deceptively limpid French lyric poet Jean Follain (1903—1971). (Copper Canyon, $14 paper 142p ISBN 1-55659-190-X; June)