The Translator"s Diary

Poetry. Winner of the 2007 Green Rose Prize. In THE TRANSLATOR’S DIARY, where truth ‘never survives its translation, ’ Jon Pineda composes a haunting elegy. His keen attention journeys through absence and presence, fragmentation and loss in memorable, riveting language –Arthur Sze. THE TRANSLATOR’S DIARY reminds us that one of poetry’s necessary functions is translation–of literal experience and abstract emotion, the personal and shared. With beautiful formal precision, Pineda moves skillfully from couplets to sonnets to lyric sequence, carefully ‘pressing syllables against the dark’ in this timeless, poignant volume –Claudia Emerson