JONATHAN COHEN: SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

[Key: Boldface = Book; C = Criticism; J = Journalism; P = Poetry; T = Translation (Poetry)]
 


2019


Two Elegies of Hope by Pedro Mir ("Hurricane Neruda" and "To Julia with No Tears") [T]. New York: Spuyten Duyvil. In press.

"With his deft and lyrical translation of Two Elegies of Hope by Pedro Mir, Jonathan Cohen brings a powerful trinity of poets to English readers: Pablo Neruda and Julia de Burgos, as elegized by our very own Whitman of the Caribbean, Pedro Mir. More and more North American readers are learning about the work of Mir who sang of our island and illuminated our struggles over the course of many dislocations. His fierce and profound singing of those struggles has inspired many writers and activists from our part of the Americas, myself included. Cohen translates Mir's words as if there were no borders between the two languages and sensibilities all occupying the same human heart, and Chiqui Vicioso's succinct and informed introduction helps us understand the importance of Mir's work in understanding our American history, its struggles, tragedies and its ultimate triumph through the work of our poets. How wonderful to share — through Cohen's poet's sensibilities and skill — nuestro Pedro Mir with the English-speaking world. I feel immense pride in the arrival of this small but powerful book to an English readership." — Julia Alvarez, author of How the García Girls Lost Their Accents and In the Time of the Butterflies

"Two Elegies of Hope, a volume containing superior translations of Pedro Mir's 'El huracán Neruda' and 'A Julia sin lágrimas,' two remarkable elegiac poems that had remained unavailable to Anglophone readers since their original publication over 40 and 20 years ago, respectively, captures the emotional force, surrealistic diction, and political clarity of the acclaimed Dominican poet's oeuvre. Memorializing great twentieth-century bards from the hemisphere whom Mir admired deeply, the Puerto Rican Julia de Burgos and the Chilean Pablo Neruda, these texts reaffirmed his view of poetry as a prophetic art whose practitioners, in certain circumstances, may wield the moral power to speak for multitudes, articulate their yearnings, and advance the cause of humanity. As such, though written in his later years, they can serve as an introduction to his compelling body of verse no less suitably than the poems corresponding to earlier stages of his career, a sizable share of which Jonathan Cohen has also translated superbly." — Silvio Torres-Saillant, author of Caribbean Poetics and The Dominican Americans (with Ramona Hernández)

"In my last encounter with Don Pedro, already very ill, he declared that he was dying from the 'defeat of my generation,' a political defeat, but not poetic, because Don Pedro lives triumphant in the memory of his poems, accompanied, as he ought to be, by Hurricane Neruda, now I imagine a gentle breeze on the Olympus of the poets, and of course with Salvador Allende.… [Planning the centennial of Julia de Burgos's birth in Santo Domingo, my colleagues and I] had also wanted a poem from the national poet of our island to the national poet of Puerto Rico, and so my second objective was to motivate Don Pedro to write it, to convince him that only he could do it, and to underscore and revive the links that tied them together, from their mothers to their ideology, from their political struggles to their visions of countryside, their hope for the future. And so, 'To Julia with No Tears' was born, because neither Julia nor Don Pedro wanted to have tears associated with their names." — From the Foreword by Chiqui Vicioso ("Don Pedro Mir and His Hope for the Future"), author of Cómo escribir un poema con Pedro Mir (How to Write a Poem with Pedro Mir) and Julia de Burgos: La nuestra (Julia de Burgos: Ours)


"Waldeen's Neruda: Translating the Dance" [C; with presentation of the previously unpublished "Coming of the Rivers" sequence of Neruda's Canto General translated by Waldeen]. Asymptote.


2018


Countersong to Walt Whitman and Other Poems [T]. By Pedro Mir. With tr. Donald D. Walsh. Leeds, Yorkshire (England): Peepal Tree P.

"We need a lot more books in English about the Dominican experience. Fortunately the field is growing, and there's some good stuff out there. I recommend one start with one of the country's greatest poets, Pedro Mir, his Countersong to Walt Whitman and Other Poems. Pure genius." — Junot Díaz, New York Times

"[Mir's] poetry achieves a rare, exceptionally felicitous marriage of poetry and politics, of individual sensibility and the chronicling of quotidian collective drama, the still unfulfilled promise of Latin America, its landscape, peoples, and societies.… The translations convey the colloquial pulse and feel, the allusive, melodic reverberations of Mir's exacting expertise." — Roberto Márquez, Village Voice

"The present bilingual edition will give both Spanish- and English-speaking readers the opportunity to recognize themselves in the poetic visage of one of the most authentic literary artists to have come from the Caribbean. Readers will find here a voice that speaks to the world as urgently as it does to the Dominican people." — From the Introduction by Silvio Torres-Saillant, author of Caribbean Poetics

"Su traducción me ha fascinado. Sin ser literal, ni mucho menos, es tan fiel y conserva tanto el estilo mismo y en general el espíritu del poema, que a veces pienso que supera el original." [Your translation fascinates me. Without being literal, not in the least, it is so faithful and preserves the very style and on the whole the spirit of the poem so much, that at times I think it surpasses the original.] — Pedro Mir, letter to Jonathan Cohen

The Dog and the Fever [C]. By Pedro Espinosa; translated by William Carlos Williams. Editor and introducer ("William Carlos Williams and His Clever Dog: Conceptismo with a New Jersey Twist"). Middletown: Wesleyan UP.

"England never knew that Golden Age Spain invented the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century European drama, poetry, and novel. Jonathan Cohen clarifies the entangled wonders in William Carlos Williams's translation of The Dog and the Fever by Pedro Espinosa, whose outrageous dog's tale recalls Miguel de Cervantes's earlier masterpiece, The Dialogue of the Dogs. Williams's vital English version mirrors Espinosa's unsurpassed dog novel related by an eloquently talkative canine." — Willis Barnstone, author of ABC of Translation

"We owe Jonathan Cohen a debt of thanks for bringing to the center of our attention this unexpectedly modern seventeenth-century whirlwind of imagistic language. The accomplished, proto-surreal, avant-garde experimentalism is helped along by William Carlos Williams's keen eye and sympathetic ear, and Cohen's sensitive editing." — Edith Grossman, author of Why Translation Matters

"This 'dredges of language' novella as Williams wanted it published, with his running commentary on both the work and his translation: Williams reveling in America's modernist future as he reclaimed his (and therefore its) Spanish literary heritage." — Julio Marzán, author of The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams

"Anything that William Carlos Williams put his hand to is more than worth reading, and Pedro Espinosa's The Dog and the Fever is no exception. The text, with its tumble of aphorisms and proverbs, reads like proto-dada or -surrealism, and when we realize that Williams did the translation project with his elderly mother, Raquel Elena Hoheb, it takes on the importance of a family project.…

"Jonathan Cohen, a poet and noted translator, who has already gathered Williams's translations in By Word of Mouth: Poems from the Spanish, 1916-1959 and prepared a new edition of Williams's breakthrough book, Al Que Quiere!, has done Williams readers a great service in blowing the dust off this translation and sprucing it up for a new century." — Bill Zavatsky, author of Where X Marks the Spot

"A novella of extraordinary sensuality, humor, and lyrical imagination, translated with exquisite delicacy by William Carlos Williams, whose love of the Spanish language is manifested in this work. A book to treasure." — Marjorie Agosín, author of The White Islands / Las Islas Blancas

"The Dog and the Fever is a fantastic piece of work, and I can see many reasons why William Carlos Williams was taken by it, especially by the sense of the language that Espinosa got down on the page. It is Williams himself listening to the living language around him there in Rutherford or Paterson or Manhattan and then working to get what he heard — the music of it! — likewise down on the page.…

"By adding Williams's own comments from his letters and Autobiography, as well as comments he added to the manuscript drafts of the novella, Jonathan Cohen has given us a much better sense of how Williams's Spanish heritage and his lifelong interest in Spanish and Latin American poetry enter into his complex epic. And that's the point: to more fully understand Williams's achievement as perhaps the foremost twentieth-century poet writing in the American grain." — From the Foreword by Paul Mariani ("In the Everyday Idiom of Spain"), author of William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked

"Empty Hills — Deep Woods — Green Moss: William Carlos Williams's Chinese Experiment" [C]. Words without Borders, April 26.

"Managua 6:30 P.M." [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Capitals: A Poetry Anthology. Ed. Abhay K. New Delhi: Bloomsbury. 136–37.


2017


Al Que Quiere! — "The Centennial Edition" [C]. By William Carlos Williams. Editor and introducer ("This Voice We Call Williams"). New York: New Directions.

"Distinct and as different as possible from the orderly statements of Eliot … are the poems of Carlos Williams, represented … in a new book of his own, Al Que Quiere, 'To Whom It May Concern.'… I do not pretend to follow all of his volts, jerks, sulks, balks, outblurts and jump-overs; but for all his roughness there remains with me the conviction that there is nothing meaningless in his book, not a line.… He is rooted. He is at times almost inarticulate, but he is never dry, never without sap in abundance." — Ezra Pound, The Future

"It seems clear that Williams is the twentieth-century poet who has done most to influence our very conception of what poetry should do, and how much it does not need to do." — The New York Review of Books

"We have the profound satisfaction of publishing a book in which, we venture to predict, the poets of the future will dig for material as the poets of today dig in Whitman's Leaves of Grass." — From the Dust Jacket of the 1917 Edition of Al Que Quiere!

"My translation of the phrase Al Que Quiere! is, 'To Him Who Wants It,' and I have always associated it with a figure on a soccer field: to him who wants the ball to be passed to him. Moreover I associate it with a particular boy, older than myself, at school with me in 1898 at Château de Lançy near Geneva, Switzerland.… His name was Suares, a Spaniard, and as I was half-Spanish, there was a bond.… The phrase made me think of him, wanting the ball on the soccer field, and of myself. I was convinced nobody in the world of poetry wanted me but I was there willing to pass the ball if anyone did want it." — From the Afterword by W. C. Williams

"Intact at Last! — William Carlos Williams's Translation of Nicolas Calas's 'To Voyage beyond the Past'" [C]. Words without Borders, April 21.

"Suicide in Deep Waters" [T]. By Juan Jennis. Poetry Bay. Fall/Winter, www.poetrybay.com.


2016


"Hurricane Neruda" [T; sections 1–4 and 9]. By Pedro Mir. Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 49.1–2: 201–20.

"Reading the Williams(-Amaral) Translations of Latin American Poetry: How to Appreciate the 'Carlos' Personae of the Late Years" [C]. William Carlos Williams Review 33.1–2: 37–41.

"Tribute to Edith Grossman, Our Translator Supreme" [C]. Edith Grossman: Making Translation Matter. PEN World Voices Festival. New York; April 25 – May 1.


2015


"Neruda in English: The Controversy over Translation Poetics" [C]. Pablo Neruda. Ed. Harold Bloom. New York: Chelsea House. eBook.

"Notes (Solentiname)" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Literary Review 58.4: 89–90.

"Remembering Salomón de la Selva — Pioneer Leader of Pan-American Poetry" [C]. Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas 48.2: 193–99.

"Room 5600" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology. Ed. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. San Francisco: City Lights. 211–17.


2014


"Introducing Waldeen's Neruda" [C; presentation of "Coming of the Birds" translated by Waldeen and previously unpublished]. Literary Review 57.4: 168–72.

"Neruda in English: Waldeen's 'Lost' Translations from Canto General" [C; presentation of eight previously unpublished translations made by Waldeen]. Translation Review 88.1: 56–74.


2013


"Delaware, O" [P]. Poetry Bay. Fall/Winter, www.poetrybay.com.

"Discoverer's Note" [C; account of discovery of William Carlos Williams' "Figure: After Quevedo" & presentation of this previously unknown poem]. Hudson Review 66.2: 353–54.

"Translating the Light — a Poetic Fusion" [C; review of Juan Gelman's Dark Times Filled with Light, tr. Hardie St. Martin]. Big Bridge 17.


2012


Review of The FSG Book of Latin American Poetry [C]. Translation Review 84.1: 68–72.

"Rise and Shine" [P]. Street Magazine 20.7. Digital.


2011


By Word of Mouth: Poems from the Spanish, 1916–1959 [C]. By William Carlos Williams. Compiler and editor. New York: New Directions. (See ND blog with poems; clip of presentation at Americas Society.)

"Superbly compiled, edited, and annotated by Jonathan Cohen, and with a stimulating preface by Julio Marzán, the bilingual anthology By Word of Mouth is the most important addition to the Williams canon since Christopher MacGowan's edition of Paterson [1992].… Every admirer of Williams' work should own this volume. It does not gather pieces of secondary interest. Rather, Williams' poems from the Spanish are not just well worth reading in their own right; they will also enhance how we understand Williams' original English-language poetry and his evolution as a writer. Our notion of Williams' work in 'the American idiom' should be forever broadened and changed because of By Word of Mouth." — Peter Schmidt, William Carlos Williams Review

"A splendid surprise." — Patrick Dunagan, NewPages

"Almost fifty years after his death, incredibly, the great American poet William Carlos Williams has published his first book of translations. Thanks to Jonathan Cohen, who had the skill and the care — and the awareness — to bring the book into existence, we now have a more complete picture of Williams’s poetic practice." — Jason Weiss, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas

"Jonathan Cohen shows us why translation is crucial to understanding Williams, who approached it as an essential act of poetry. The poet emerges as the first among our modernist writers to see the literary value of translating classical and contemporary verse from both Spain and Latin America. By Word of Mouth makes that clear." — Edith Grossman

"This book will reinforce the sense of Williams as one deeply invested in the language and rhythm of the New World — North as well as South." — Paul Mariani, author of William Carlos Williams: A New World Naked

"It seems clear that Williams is the twentieth-century poet who has done most to influence our very conception of what poetry should do, and how much it does not need to do." — Adam Kirsch, New York Review of Books

"Jonathan Cohen, thank[s] so much for the WCW translations. It's hard to believe they had to wait so long to find a way into the world. You've done a real service to poetry." — U.S. Poet Laureate Philip Levine (personal communication)

"This book affirms that the most American poet of them all, William Carlos Williams — the poet of 'the American idiom' — also had Latin American and Caribbean roots." — Ernesto Cardenal

"Williams used translation as an extension of his program to 'create a modern poetics based on American speech, thought, and experience.'… [His] 'Prelude in Boricua,' made upon his return from Puerto Rico, comes close to being a virtuosic rendering of Luis Palés Matos's 'Preludio en boricua': 'Mixup of kinkhead and high yaller / And other big time mixups. / Messaround of voodoo chatter.'… Cohen's By Word of Mouth joins a handful of (relatively) recent titles focusing on the translational activities of writer-translators." — Gregary J. Racz, Metamorphoses

"By Word of Mouth: Poems from the Spanish, is (besides being a book of wonderful poems) a reminder that Williams's call for 'American speech' in American poetry wasn't mere United States-ian nationalism. It was a vision of poetry that encompassed the entire New World." — Greer Mansfied, Bookslut

"Williams' early understanding of the relevance of transnational, multilingual, American dialogue is more relevant today than ever." — Julio Ramos, author of Divergent Modernities: Culture and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Latin America

"In the translations [By Word of Mouth], Carlos rises to the surface to speak of intangibles. In this way the translations fit into the 'scheme' of stasis, his two cultures bridged. They are another celebration of his Carlos lineage, transmitting to this culture its 'mingling' spirit — Bill tensely fused with Carlos is Williams the American poet." — From the Foreword by Julio Marzán

"For Those Dead, Our Dead …" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Being Human. Ed. Neil Astley. Highgreen, Eng.: Bloodaxe. 360.

"Newly-Discovered Translations by William Carlos Williams; Pablo Neruda's 'Ode to My Socks' and Eugenio Florit's 'Conversation with My Father'" [C]. Hudson Review 64.1: 43–51.

"On William Carlos Williams's Translation of Ernesto Mejía Sánchez's 'Vigils'" [C]. Words without Borders, July 14.

"Some Thoughts for Reviewers of Literary Translations" [C]. With Susan Bernofsky and Edith Grossman. Words without Borders, March 23.

"Stardust" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems from New Directions. Ed. Jeffrey Yang. New York: New Directions. 125.

"Swans" [T]. By Enrique Lihn. Birds, Beasts, and Seas: Nature Poems from New Directions. Ed. Jeffrey Yang. New York: New Directions. 131.

"Tavern" [T]. By Roque Dalton. From a Terrace in Prague. Ed. Stephan Delbos. Prague: Litteraria Pragensia. 153–70. ["… a beautiful and fulfilling anthology … Poems such as Roque Dalton's 'Tavern' and many others just sing and inspire …" — Ed Sanders]


2010


"The Earth's Dreams: Raúl Zurita's Purgatory and Other Sequences" [C]. Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas. 43.2: 285–89.

"For Those Dead, Our Dead …" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. The Ecco Anthology of International Poetry. Eds. Ilya Kaminsky and Susan Harris. New York: Ecco P. 297.

"For You" [P]. Long-Islander, March 25: A11.

"Into the American Idiom: William Carlos Williams' Translation of Jorge Carrera Andrade's 'Dictado por el agua'" [C]. Translation Review 77/78: 28–42. ["The best new scholarship in Latin American translation studies." — Charles Hatfield, University of Texas at Dallas]


2009


"The Father's Monologue with His Infant Son" [T]. By Enrique Lihn. Oxford Book of Latin American Poetry. Eds. Cecilia Vicuña and Ernesto Livon-Grosman. New York: Oxford UP. 367–69.

Pluriverse: New and Selected Poems [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Editor and translator, with trs. Mireya Jaimes-Freyre, John Lyons, Thomas Merton, Robert Pring-Mill, Kenneth Rexroth, and Donald D. Walsh. New York: New Directions.

"Ernesto and I gave an open-air poetry reading, plus a little ceremony in which I presented to him a seed from Pasternak's grave given to me by the Russian poet Andrei Voznesensky. I don't know whether Ernesto ever planted this symbol of freedom, but he himself is such a seed." — Lawrence Ferlinghetti, in the Foreword

From the Reviews …

"Readers of English, thank your gods: the breadth of Ernesto Cardenal's amazing poetic career is now available for our consumption." — Vincent Francone, Three Percent

"Clear, impassioned, brilliant. Beautiful." — Richard Rayner, Los Angeles Times

"Cardenal shows his rarest talent — the ability to love and be angry in one perfectly formed phrase." — George Wallace, Poetry Bay

"One can only admire the feat of creating an amazingly coherent selection from such a vast literary output.… [A]ll these poems … are essential reading in this well-selected and expertly-translated anthology." — Steven F. White, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas

"Cohen's collection, the largest selection of Cardenal's work so far in one volume in English, suggests that we have far more to learn about this poet, especially in the way, like most strong poets, that he opens himself so vividly to such a wide range of experience. Indeed, in Cardenal's many commitments and contradictions, and his deep involvement with North American poetry and culture, this volume suggests we could probably better understand our own poetry — and perhaps even country — if we were to study his." — David J. Rothman, Hudson Review

"Highly recommended for all libraries and could be used as a text for courses in multicultural and ethnic studies." — Alva V. Cellini, MultiCultural Review

"Absorbing and sweeping narrative verse." — Ray Olson, Booklist

"Essential for poetry and Latin American collections." — Jack Shreve, Library Journal

"Pluriverse selects the most significant and varied work from Cardenal’s long practice." — Ron Slate, On the Sea Wall

"[T]hese works are gracefully unified through an exploration of the possible intersection between political and spiritual life." — Kristina Marie Darling, Literary Review

"A worthy tribute to this living legend. The diversity of the work serves to enhance the overall experience." — Joseph D. Haske, American Book Review

"Cohen's final words are [in the Introduction]: 'And so, here they are — to gladden your heart and enrich your soul.' I agree. For being such well-crafted versions in English, these translations will gladden the heart, enrich the soul, and reach a wide audience." — Anne Fountain, Translation Review



2008


Fragments of "Martí in New York (1895)" [P]. Long Island Sounds: An Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Tammy Nuzzo-Morgan. Southampton, NY: North Sea Poetry Scene P. 341–43.

"Psalm 5" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Golden Handcuffs Review 1.10: 162–63.

"Translating Cardenal's 'Managua 6:30 P.M.': The Challenge of the Kiss and Other Things" [C]. Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 54: 152–61.


2007


"In Bryant’s Footsteps: Translating Nicaragua’s Cardenal" [C]. 91st Meridian 5.1. International Writing Program, U of Iowa.

"Streets"; "Tangier"; "Birthday in Belgium"; "Rendezvous" [P]. Poetryvlog.com.

"To Walt Whitman" [P]. Long Islander, August 2: A9.


2006


"Cedar Hill"; "Walt Whitman" [P]. The Light of City and Sea. Ed. Daniel Thomas Moran. Sound Beach, NY: Street P. 39–40.

Countersong to Walt Whitman [T]. By Pedro Mir. Washington: Azul Editions. Excerpts in Logos 5.3.

"For Those Dead, Our Dead …" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Poems to Live By: In Troubling Times. Ed. Joan Murray. Boston: Beacon P. 87–88.


2005


"Managua 6:30 P.M." [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Rattapallax 12: 19.

"Muna Lee" [C]. Encyclopedia Latina: History, Culture, and Society in the United States. Ed. Ilan Stavans and Harold Augenbraum. Vol. 2. Danbury, CT: Scholastic Library Publishing. 431–32.

"The Tishomingo (1855)" [P]. Long Islander, July 14: A9.


2004


"Neruda in English: Establishing His Residence in U.S. Poetry" [C]. MultiCultural Review 13.4: 25–28.

A Pan-American Life: Selected Poetry and Prose of Muna Lee [C]. Madison: U of Wisconsin P.

"Jonathan Cohen has given us the exquisite gift of recognition: the life of Muna Lee — a poet, essayist, human rights activist, and indeed a visionary and fervent Pan-Americanist. Through Cohen's insightful and original biography, readers will get to know, as well as love, the spirit of Muna Lee, one of the most extraordinary and creative figures of the twentieth century, a builder of bridges and hopes. Cohen's work will not allow us to forget her. More so, it rescues her from the invisibility of her work and life. A magnificent tribute to a magnificent woman." — Marjorie Agosín, author of A Map of Hope

"Jonathan Cohen's edition of Muna Lee's work and the accompanying biographical essay function as a combined project of historical recovery.… It reclaims Lee's place among American poets and establishes the importance of her work as a pan-Americanist.… This collection, by gathering a significant selection of her work, helps us begin to appreciate an important figure in pan-American literature." — Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Review: Literature and Arts of the Americas

"Para entender a Muna Lee y su mundo hay que leer este libro sin perder una línea. Es un viaje de descubrimiento que les dejará asombrados." [To understand Muna Lee and her world, it is necessary to read this book without missing a line. It is a journey of discovery that will amaze you.] — Sonia L. Cordero, El Vocero

"A poet who is also a sound scholar, a mistress of tongues, and a profound believer in a cause is a rare and wonderful thing. Muna Lee is all four." — Archibald MacLeish, The American Story



2003


"Prayer for Marilyn Monroe" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Review: Latin American Literature and Arts 67: 13–14.

"Toward a Common Destiny on the American Continent: The Pan Americanism of Gabriela Mistral" [C]. Gabriela Mistral: The Audacious Traveler. Ed. Marjorie Agosín. Athens: Ohio UP. 1–18.

"Walt Whitman in Ohio" [P]. Visiting Walt: Poems Inspired by the Life and Work of Walt Whitman. Eds. Thom Tammaro and Sheila Coghill. Iowa City: U of Iowa P. 28.


2002


"Paumanok"; "Poospatucks (1875)"; "Rendezvous" [P]. Improper Hamptonian: 18.


1999


"A Museum in Kampuchea" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Scanning the Century: The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry. Ed. Peter Forbes. London: Penguin. 226–27.


1998


"For Those Dead, Our Dead …" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. The American Voice Anthology of Poetry. Ed. Frederick Smock. Lexington: UP of Kentucky. 17–18.

"Waldeen and the Americas: The Dance Has Many Faces" [C; rev. vers.]. A Woman's Gaze: Latin American Women Artists. Ed. Marjorie Agosin. Fredonia, NY: White Pine P. 224–42.


1996


"The Art of Translation" [C]. Literary Cavalcade 49.2: 28–29.

"León"; "Lights" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry. Ed. Stephen Tapscott. Austin: U of Texas P. 297–98, 301–02.

"Revolution" [T]. By Enrique Lihn. Twentieth-Century Latin American Poetry. Ed. Stephen Tapscott. Austin: U of Texas P. 321–22.

Small Hours of the Night [T]. By Roque Dalton. With trs. James Graham, Ralph Nelson, Paul Pines, Hardie St. Martin and David Unger. Willimantic, CT: Curbstone.

"Finally and gloriously here are the poems of Roque Dalton, one of the most compelling Central American poets it has been my privilege to read." — Ariel Dorfman, author of Last Waltz in Santiago

"He was brilliant. His presence alone gave off light." — Juan Gelman, author of Unthinkable Tenderness

[Dalton's poetry illustrates] his profound conviction that the poet can and must, in his life as in his work, serve as the finely-honed scalpel of change, both in word and deed." — Claribel Alegria, author of Luisa in Realityland

"The early poems, those from a young revolutionary, are full of extravagance: 'I have this wild itch to laugh / or kill myself' and 'I don't believe in angels / but the moon is now dead for me.' As Dalton's poetry matures, his imagination ranges, sometimes recklessly, running from line to line without regard for negative space or silence, but never without passion. 'Man uses his old disasters like a mirror. / An hour or so after dusk / the man picks up the painful remnants of his day / and worried sick he puts them right next to his heart / he sweats like a TB patient fighting for his life / and sinks into his deep lonely rooms.'

"Many of the poems written in exile in Mexico and Cuba are manly, wine-drinking montages of life on the Communist edge. In the section "Tavern and Other Places," he is at his best: creatively illuminating the soul of his home country; cataloguing with humility his experiences as a soldier; and musing over some of his prisonmates, soldiers, friends and countrymen. Here Dalton achieves a ripe, formal confidence in which meaning and expression are fully integrated. The final, wry poems punch small holes in bourgeois religion, politics and life. This is the most comprehensive and scholarly edition of Dalton's poetry available in English." — Publishers Weekly

"Therapeutics" [T]. By Roque Dalton. American Poetry Review 25.5: 10.


1995


"Room 5600" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. City Lights Pocket Poets Anthology. Ed. Lawrence Ferlinghetti. San Francisco: City Lights. 211–17.

"With Walker in Nicaragua" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Research Publications' American Journey: The Hispanic-American Experience. Eds. Frank De Varona, Frank Menchaca, Bryce Milligan, et al. Woodbridge, CT: Primary Source Media.


1994


"Madrigal"; "With Eyes Closed"; "Stars and Cricket"; "Homage to Claudius Ptolemaeus"; "Epitaph on No Stone"; "Wind, Water, Stone" [T]. By Octavio Paz. The Age of Koestler. Ed. Nicolaus P. Kogon. Kalamazoo, MI: Practices of the Wind. 215, 229, 403, 431, 513, 595.

"This is the bridge …" [T]. By Homero Aridjis. The Age of Koestler. Ed. Nicolaus P. Kogon. Kalamazoo, MI: Practices of the Wind. 790.


1993


Countersong to Walt Whitman & Other Poems [T]. By Pedro Mir. With tr. Donald D. Walsh. Washington: Azul Editions.

"We need a lot more books in English about the Dominican experience. Fortunately the field is growing, and there's some good stuff out there. I recommend one start with one of the country's greatest poets, Pedro Mir, his Countersong to Walt Whitman and Other Poems. Pure genius." — Junot Díaz, New York Times

"[Mir's] poetry achieves a rare, exceptionally felicitous marriage of poetry and politics, of individual sensibility and the chronicling of quotidian collective drama, the still unfulfilled promise of Latin America, its landscape, peoples, and societies.… The translations convey the colloquial pulse and feel, the allusive, melodic reverberations of Mir's exacting expertise." — Roberto Márquez, Village Voice

"The present bilingual edition will give both Spanish- and English-speaking readers the opportunity to recognize themselves in the poetic visage of one of the most authentic literary artists to have come from the Caribbean. Readers will find here a voice that speaks to the world as urgently as it does to the Dominican people." — From the Introduction by Silvio Torres-Saillant

"Su traducción me ha fascinado. Sin ser literal, ni mucho menos, es tan fiel y conserva tanto el estilo mismo y en general el espíritu del poema, que a veces pienso que supera el original." [Your translation fascinates me. Without being literal, not in the least, it is so faithful and preserves the very style and on the whole the spirit of the poem so much, that at times I think it surpasses the original.] — Pedro Mir, letter to Jonathan Cohen



1991


"The Naming of America: Vespucci's Good Name" [C]. Encounters 7: 16–20.

"Selected Resources [for Literary Translators]." A Handbook for Literary Translators. 2nd ed. Prep. Translation Committee PEN American Center. New York: PEN American Center. 24–32.


1989


"Waldeen and the Americas: The Dance Has Many Faces" [C]. American Voice 16: 58–73.


1988


"The Naming of America: Fragments We've Shored Against Ourselves" [C]. American Voice 13: 56–72.

"Oquendo's 'Rain': A Choral Rendering" [C]. American Voice 10: 82–112.

"The Parrots" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Anthology of Magazine Verse & Yearbook of American Poetry (1986/1987). Beverly Hills: Monitor. 80.


1987


"Among Facades"; "Malta" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. City Lights Review 1: 191–93.

"Apparition in Hamburg"; "A Glass of Water in Cologne"; "Empty Shelves"; "A Museum in Kampuchea" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Translation 18: 246–53.

From Nicaragua, with Love: Poems (1979–1986) [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. San Francisco: City Lights.

"From Nicaragua, with Love offers a sweeping view of the landscape of Ernesto Cardenal's poetry as it has developed after the 1979 Nicaraguan revolution. The liberation theology of this impassioned poet-priest is inherent in his poetry as it is in his public life, for these poems articulate his hope for a 'society of love' in Nicaragua, which is what the revolution means to him.

"Most of the poems in this volume appear here in English for the first time, and they include victory poems, love poems, elegies, ecological and travel poems. These are poems of history in the making, in the sense of social commitment, but also in the deeper sense of personal history — poems of 'love in the making.'

"In his introduction, Jonathan Cohen reviews Cardenal's recent concerns, and he has provided a chronology of his life and literary works." — From City Lights

"The outstanding socially committed poet of his generation in Spanish America." — Times Literary Supplement

"In Bryant's Footsteps: Translating 'Con Walker en Nicaragua' " [C]. American Voice 6: 78–91.

Introduction [C]. From Nicaragua, with Love. By Ernesto Cardenal. San Francisco: City Lights. 1–6.

"Walt Whitman in Ohio" [P]. Agni Review 24/25: 241.


1986


"For Those Dead, Our Dead …" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. American Voice 2: 100.

"The Price of Bras" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Massachusetts Review, 27.3–4: 510.

"Vision from the Blue Plane-Window"; "Founding of the Latin American Association for Human Rights"; "The Parrots"; "New Ecology"; "At the Tomb of the Guerrilla" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Agni Review 23: 73–80.


1985


"From Nicaragua, with Love" [C]. Introduction. With Walker in Nicaragua and Other Early Poems (1949–1954). By Ernesto Cardenal. Middletown: Wesleyan UP. 3–17.

"León" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Nation 238.3: 100.

Neruda in English: A Critical History of the Verse Translations and Their Impact on American Poetry [C]. Ann Arbor: UMI Dissertation Publishing.

With Walker in Nicaragua and Other Early Poems (1949–1954) [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Middletown: Wesleyan UP.

"There could hardly be a better introduction to Cardenal than Jonathan Cohen's beautifully edited and really brilliant translations of his early poems. With Walker in Nicaragua is an admirable book in every way. There are two extraordinary poems in it, all of the poems are interesting, the introductory essay is helpful, clear, and brief, and Cohen's translations are so good you feel that the poems might have been written in English." — Robert Hass, Washington Post

"The Cardenal of most interest to me is the poet of the late 1950s and early 1960s, whose work is represented in With Walker in Nicaragua, translated with great accuracy, simplicity and beauty by Jonathan Cohen.… Publication of With Walker in Nicaragua in English provides us with examples of some of the best poetry of a modern master." — Richard Elman, Nation

"A small but intense book, well organized around the title poem.… This emphasis on history in South American poets is one of their great gifts, and the poetry is a kind of example to North American poets. For that alone, it is [a] precious … and timely book. The poetry is … carried along by some purity of intention, lifting the language.… Cohen's translation is excellent. He follows the Spanish text scrupulously … with great aplomb and flair." — Robert Bly



1983


"The Filibusters"; "Greytown"; "John Roach, Mariner" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. American Poetry Review 12.3: 18.

"Neruda in English: The Controversy over Translation Poetics" [C]. Missouri Review 6.3: 176–92.

"Raleigh"; "Star Found Dead on Park Avenue" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. New Directions in Prose and Poetry 46. New York: New Directions. 105–09.

"Squier in Nicaragua" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Denver Quarterly 18.3: 17–25.

"With Walker in Nicaragua" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Ironwood 11.1: 61–74.


1982


"The Early History of Neruda in English, 1925–1937" [C]. Romance Notes 22.3: 272–76.

"In the Subway Stream"; "Old Lady on the Subway"; "Hypermanhattan" [T]. By Enrique Lihn. New Directions in Prose and Poetry 44. New York: New Directions. 155–56.


1981


"The Poetics of Translating Neruda" [C]. Rev. of Translating Neruda: The Way to Macchu Picchu, by John Felstiner. Review (Center for Inter-American Relations) 29: 83–85.

"Port Jefferson '76" [P]. Paumanok Rising. Eds. Vince Clemente and Graham Everett. Setauket, NY: Four Rivers. 185–86.


1980


"Discovering Neruda: An Interview with H. R. Hays" [C]. Translation Review 6: 29–34.

"Lights." [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. In These Times 4.36: 12.

Neruda in English: A Critical History of the Verse Translations and Their Impact on American Poetry [C]. Stony Brook: State University of New York.

"Paumanok" [P]. On Good Ground. Eds. Ray Freed and Jim Tyack. Port Jefferson, NY: Street. 15–16.

"Song of Lempira" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. International Poetry Review 6.2: 78–87.

"Trip to New York" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Sun 4.3: 23–37.

Zero Hour and Other Documentary Poems [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. With trs. Paul W. Borgeson, Jr., Robert Pring-Mill and Donald D. Walsh. New York: New Directions.

"Cardenal is a major epic-historical poet, in the grand lineage of Central American prophet Rubén Darío." — Allen Ginsberg

"Zero Hour and Other Documentary Poems brings together in English translation eight of the longer poems by Nicaragua's impassioned Marxist priest, Ernesto Cardenal, described in the Times Literary Supplement as 'the outstanding socially committed poet of his generation in Spanish America.' His work, like Pablo Neruda's, is unabashedly political; like Ezra Pound's, his poems demonstrate history on an epic scale — but the voice is all his own and speaks from the heart of a land sunk for generations in poverty, oppression, and turmoil.

"As both activist and contemplative, Cardenal maintained strong ties with the Sandinist guerillas while at the same time living a form of primitive Christianity at his religious settlement of Our Lady of Solentiname on an island in Lake Nicaragua. In late 1977, amid increasing civil violence, the Nicaraguan National Guard utterly destroyed the Solentiname community, and Cardenal fled to neighboring Costa Rica, where he continued his efforts on behalf of the revolutionary movement. With the final collapse of the Somoza dictatorship in 1979, he returned to Nicaragua as his country's new Minister of Culture. Spanning a quarter century, the poems in Zero Hour constitute a vivid record of continuous struggle against flagrant exploitation and brutal indifference to common humanity."



1979


"Living Fossil Is Coming Ashore" [J]. New York Times, June 10, sec. 11 (LI): 21.

Poems from the Island [P]. Port Jefferson, NY: Street.

"Jonathan Cohen has re-created a sense of place, given a 'local habitation and a name' to an island too often seen as simply a wide shoulder for a highway on which people with no history hurry toward no future." — Paul Dolan, author of Tradition in Modern Literary Criticism

"Poems from the Island is a remarkable poetic sequence. These poems are so refreshing in an age of confessional lyrics. Cohen realizes he isn't the center of the world. His epic voice resonates in the documentary poems here, which advance Pound's canto technique beautifully. He uses Long Island history as a metaphor of American history.…

"There is a certain public appeal to Cohen's work. He seems to be writing not just for the literati, but for the public. I am not surprised The New York Times opened its pages to his poems, in particular his 'Paradise' which integrates prose and verse to create an elegy with real vision and force." — Alice Gold, American Angle


1978


The Dark Room and Other Poems [T]. By Enrique Lihn. With trs. John Felstiner and David Unger. New York: New Directions.

"What amazes me in this collection is that these three translators, poets themselves, have managed to show the poet as he essentially is and have not intruded their own style into what he has to say. This is the soul of good translation: you will defend to the death the way you have done the thing, but you will always defend it as you see, or think, the poet has seen fit. This is one of the best 'collective' collections of translations that I have seen in many a moon wherein the poet has been preserved as he is by those who work on him." — Gregory Rabassa, Parnassus

"This bilingual collection … is an intelligent selection which introduces the poet to the American reader in his broad-ranging matter and style." — Robert Lima, Library Journal

"Profuse, inspired, and passionate." — Booklist

"A brilliant and original vision of Latin America." — Roberto Bolaño

"The Island" [P]. New York Times, Apr. 9, sec. 11 (LI): 21.

"Niagara Falls" [P]. Street Magazine 2.4: 34.


1977


"Album"; "The sea isn't for you to think about …" [T]. By Enrique Lihn. Street Magazine 2.3: 58–59.

"A Black Poet's View on Christmas 1760: America's First Black Poet" [J]. New York Times, Dec. 25, sec. 11 (LI): 9+.

H.R. Hays & Spanish America [C]. Port Jefferson, NY: Street.

"When I was trying to write my first book, I found the most amazing things in the Reading Rooms — the two big ones with their green lampshades and ecstatic high ceilings — of the New York Public Library on 42nd St; and one of the most astonishing to me was H.R. Hays' 12 Spanish American Poets.…

"This book is a mountain pass. How odd that you don't even know of the mountains until you are in the pass! I am grateful to H.R. Hays for so many gifts, in prose and poetry … especially for this gift. I imagine he conceived the book himself, no one asked him for it, and no one thanked him for it, much. Well, so, we can thank him for it now." — From the Foreword by Robert Bly

"Kentucky" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Niagara Magazine 7: 18–21.

"The Montauk That Might Have Been: A Dream of Another Miami" [J]. New York Times, Aug. 25, sec. 11 (LI): 21–22.

"'The Most Economical Caribbean Paradises …'"; "The Cotton Fields"; "Calls"; "José Dolores Estrada" [T]. By Ernesto Cardenal. Street Magazine 2.3: 60–63.

"Paradise" [P]. New York Times, Apr. 3, sec. 11 (LI): 26.

"The Phantoms of the Ocean" [J]. New York Times, May 1, sec. 11 (LI): 35.

"Stories Told in Stone: Gravestones as Folk Art" [J]. New York Times, Mar. 6, sec. 11 (LI): 3+.


1976


"Port Jefferson"; "Pygmalion" [P]. Quarry West 5: n. pag.

"Sermon on Blood"; "Sermon on Thunder and Lightning"; "Elegies"; "Out There"; "Sojourn of the Soul Awaiting Peace"; "Sojourn of the Imprisoned Soul" [T]. By Rafael Alberti. Pequod 2.1: 89–95.


1975


"Journey through Streets" [T]. By Javier Heraud. Street Magazine 2.1: n. pag.





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