There were some terrific books of poems published by U.S. authors this year, including Kevin Young's polyrhythmic lament Jelly Roll (Knopf), Donald Revell's mythico-religious My Mojave (Alice James) and Carol Muske-Dukes's Sparrow, a serial elegy for her husband, actor David Dukes. Heather McHugh's Eyeshot (Wesleyan) winks wryly at word and world's receding visuals, while August Kleinzahler's The Strange Hours That Travellers Keep (FSG) logs them as they go by. Lyn Hejinian published three engaging new works—Slowly (Tuumba), The Fatalist (Omnidawn) and My Life in the Nineties (Shark)—and, as one half of Atelos press (with Travis Ortiz), issued Rodrigo Toscano's critique-cum-rostrum Platform and Brian Kim Stefans's digital poetics manifesto Fashionable Noise. But if the Ezra Pound aphorism is true, and "poetry is news that stays news," then culling information from a variety of sources is more important than ever. The following books of translations bring word from various heres and theres—from Alexandria, Va., to the Chuvash Autonomous Republic—and a variety of languages, and all read beautifully in English.
Child-and-RoseGennady Aygi, trans. from the Russian by Peter France (New Directions)
The exquisite short verses of Aygi, based in Moscow but originally from the Chuvash Autonomous Republic, seem to move forward and backward in time and in space simultaneously, proceeding from small moments of encounter with nature or family and revealing their infinities.
Unfortunately, It Was Paradise: Selected PoemsMahmood Darwish, edited and trans. from the Arabic by Munir Akash and Carolyn Forché with Sinan Antoon and Amira El-Zein (California)
Darwish's complex linguistic negotiations of deeply contested places, on the earth and in the mind, demand and sustain serious reading and discussion. Forché's own Blue Hour (HarperCollins) will undoubtedly make some top lists this year, and her fluid and precise approach to translation is everywhere apparent here.
Sin Puertas Visibles: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry by Mexican WomenEdited and trans. from the Spanish by Jen Hofer (Univ. of Pittsburgh)
Poet Hofer's (Slide Rule) anthology, which might be translated Without Visible Doors, offers access on the writers' own terms, with wide selections from 11 poets, each with at least one book out in Mexico but not previously published in the states, including Ana Belén López, Mónica Nepote, Dana Gelinas, María Rivera, Ofelia Pérez Sepúlveda, Dolores Dorantes and Laura Solórzano.
Nine AlexandriasSemezdeh Mehmedinovic, trans. from the Bosnian by Ammiel Alcalay (City Lights)
Emigrating from Bosnia as a political refugee in 1996, Mehmedinovic has settled in one of the nine Alexandrias that serve as muses here—Alexandria, Va. From there, the author of Sarajevo Blues lights out for the entire territory of his adopted country and returns with three superb sequences of poems.
The Poetess Counts to 100 and Bows Out: Selected PoemsAna Enriqueta Terán, trans. from the Spanish by Marcel Smith (Princeton Univ.)
Born in Venezuela, where she still lives and works, in 1918, Teran published 12 books of verse between 1946 and 1992. Smith presents a range of her steely and beautiful work, with original texts on the facing page: "Simply complex, the heart turns aside/ from knowing the end where now/ becomes a robust darkness swelling/ grim light into reflex abyss."
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