Opposite Side of the Street Parking
When I buy a poetry book from a non-English poet, I usually prefer those with the original language on the facing page. This is pretty standard for German and the Romantic languages. It’s almost difficult to find a book of Pablo Neruda, for example, that doesn’t include the Spanish. Although I never learned Spanish, I can decipher some of it via basic Italian and French. Plus growing up in America you couldn’t really avoid acquiring some Spanish, even in deepest New Jersey.
I enjoy scanning the Spanish when reading Neruda or Lorca or whomever. My eyes sometimes jump to the opposite page just to check that this marvelousness is actually happening, as if I could find out how to do it!
If you’re interested in languages, one fun way to waste money is to buy different translations of the same poetry. I have a couple English translations of Wislawa Szymborska, and it’s a very uneven business. In one poem — Contribution to Statistics — the translator resorts to a baseball metaphor, driving me insane. I doubt Szymborska ever used a baseball metaphor. Or maybe she did. Since I don’t understand a word of Polish, how can I know? Since none of the translations I have include the Polish, I can’t set out to try.
At some point, having the original language alongside the translation loses its usefulness for everyone but a handful of readers. I recently got Lidija Dimkovska’s terrific “Do Not Awaken Them with Hammers.” Although only about a million and half people actually speak Macedonian, the publisher provides the original version of the poem. I don’t read the language, but I still looked through the poems for anything recognizable. I can only report back that they use Pantene shampoo in Macedonia.