Found in Translation: Wally Swist

“Just as fragments of a vessel, in order to be fitted together, must correspond to each other in the tiniest details but need not resemble each other, so translation, instead of making itself resemble the meaning of the original, must lovingly, and in detail, fashion in its own language a counterpart to the original’s mode of intention, in order to make both of them recognizable as fragments of a vessel, as fragments of a greater language.” —Walter Benjamin (1892–1940), “The Translator’s Task,” translated by Steven Rendall

Q: How and why did you begin translating? 

Reading voluminously eventually precipitated an interest in translating. Reading Kenneth Rexroth’s translations from the Chinese and Japanese became my first love when I was seventeen. A few years later, I was wowed by Another Republic, the seminal anthology of translations edited by Charles Simic and Mark Strand. That book opened me up to the Europeans and South Americans I hadn’t been aware of yet at that time. However, my beginning as a bookseller, lead buyer, and bookstore manager in the Yale community had its advantages in being provided foreknowledge of new books being published. When I stepped out of that role, briefly, and took a job as a cataloger in an all-poetry bookshop, I had a hand in developing catalogs of independent, small, and university press books, which often had a number of translations that I included.

However, initially, it was knowing Stephen Mitchell, who was a grad student at Yale, that made a definitive difference. Stephen would often show me his most recent Rilke translations as we met while walking across campus. We also were a part of a small Zen meditation group that met in the basement of Yale Divinity School Chapel up on Prospect Street. That connection for me became personally archetypal. My avid interest in reading literature in translation only magnified.

Coming to know other translators of Rilke became nearly uncanny. I would get to know Art Beck over a decade-long correspondence, which was probably the tipping point for me to begin my own translations. Although I would need to mention Mark Burrows, whose Rilke translations I also came to love, as another translator that I had actual correspondence with. The door kept knocking for me to begin my own work in translation.

Some years ago, when my spouse, Tevis, began sleeping more because she would tire easily largely due to being overtaken by Alzheimer’s, I decided I would use that time, which would have been spent with her, to translate. I began with a collection of Lorca’s Andalusian Songs, translated by Alan Brilliant, entitled Tree of Song, and published by him in a beautiful letterpress edition. As I translated each poem, I realized that my translations were different than his. I had studied Spanish for five years but my decisions in translating were more informed by how I both heard and listened to Lorca himself. That was key, and this became core to my practice as a translator.

However, I was invited to partake in a translation project about a dozen years earlier. Masako Takeda, who is an emeritus professor from Osaka Shoin Women’s University, and a colleague and friend of Tevis’s, when she was Curator of Special Collections at the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts, asked me to assist in co-translating thirty haiku that a Japanese businessman had curated to honor a redevelopment project in the Anekoji cultural project in Osaka. Masako would provide a rough translation from the Japanese, then pass that on to me. The challenge was that I needed to often include the names of new buildings in the historical district, which took up several syllables I wish I had in order to evoke the tone, feel, and sometimes the fragrances that were included in the original haiku. We worked for two or three years on this project. When I couldn’t find a publisher the work was laid away for about a decade before I tried Modern Haiku, who then readily featured the work in an issue of their journal. Getting permission from the thirty-two authors had been an issue before, since there was interest in the haiku from Transference: A Journal Featuring Poetry in Translation, but I had found the processing of all those permissions quite daunting—an administrative task that would take writing time away from me.

However, these translations finally found print to some small acclaim.

What really became my full commitment to translation came about a decade ago when I tried my hand with Rilke’s Life of Mary, something that neither Stephen nor Mark nor Art had done to my knowledge. I was attracted by the fact that Stephen Spender published a translation of the little-known sequence by Rilke in the late forties. It was a struggle. Translating from the Spanish was one thing. Translating from Rilke’s deceptively difficult German was another. I had already known that Rilke used variants and sometimes made up words. But I persevered and through my persevering, which took some years spent on such a short sequence of just more than a dozen poems, I finally came to a version of my own (other than initial “imitations”), but what this precipitated, really, was my coming to terms with needing to translate Rilke’s Uncollected Poems. They sang to me in similar ways that his other work did, however, the translations I was creating – again as in my observation of my differing versions of Alan Brilliant’s Lorca – my versions were different from any others, including Edward Snow’s, who has published a volume of Rilke’s Uncollected Poems with Farrar, Straus. At least, after decades, I had really found work that was not at all that well known and work that I loved. I could now steer by these two characteristics.

Q. What translations (by other translators) do you feel a special connection to? Why?  

There are many, especially since I’ve read deeply in world literature. However, I could reiterate that I loved Kenneth Rexroth’s translations from the Chinese and Japanese because I could feel that he revered the work he translated. Rexroth was an autodidact and a bibliophile, which I frankly found attractive. His reverence of translating literature he loved surpassed what some might call a hindrance in his not having studied the languages he translated in a university, but just the same learned on his own. Considered to be father of the San Francisco Literary Renaissance, Rexroth sets a standard for translation from the Chinese and Japanese through the aesthetic he creates in the translations themselves.

(As an aside, interestingly enough, upon Rexroth’s death, Donald Hall wrote a column in The New York Times Book Review heralding Rexroth as an unparalleled writer and translator, citing his Love Poems of Marichiko, sensually evocative poems supposedly translated from the Japanese, although originally written by Rexroth himself, as Hall revealed. Rexroth was a good enough translator to lead most of his readers into thinking his fine original poems in this instance were translations.)

Readers can intuit whether a translator is good or not. I carried Rexroth’s books of translations everywhere, so that when I had a moment I could reconnect with their resonance, their beauty.

Also, I have to mention the translations of W. S. Merwin in light of this, especially his translations of the Argentine poet, Roberto Juarroz. I had memorized these translations, read them at my readings in lofts in New Haven in the 1970s, spoke them to myself walking across campus. Several decades later, I revisited Juarroz and made my own selection of translations from his work. The result was Untranslatable Song: The Vertical Poetry of Roberto Juarroz, which was published by Pierian Springs Press in January 2026.

Q. How does your translating practice relate to any of your other creative or critical practices?

I would need to answer this question through my knowledge of how two literary masters made use of their practice of translating. Kenneth Rexroth claimed he would translate between dry periods of his own writing. I had not known Rexroth personally, but I did have the fortuitous occasion of coming to know Richard Wilbur, whom I hosted and introduced at readings he gave toward the end of his life, and Richard relayed to me that he would take on translating a play by Moliere when he felt he was between working on books of his own poems.

Q. Why do English speakers need to read this author now?   

We are graced with a number of authors we can read in translation. Rilke is close to me: his sense of the mystical, his imagery, his layers and depths. In our now dystopian world created by the obdurate visions of the Trump regime, we as a culture need to be aware of spirit, not the blind rigidity of Christian Nationalism, but what I term psycho-spirituality, a wide and encompassing vision of what spirit can be and what often old-time religion isn’t. Rilke offers this. However, I believe I elaborate on this more in answering questions below.

Q. How would you describe the relationship with the author you are translating? (This could be a statement with a living contemporary author or even a statement about a parasocial relationship with them.)

I believe my work in translating Roberto Juarroz might be appropriate in attempting to answer this question. Juarroz, in my estimation, practices a kind of philosophical tautology in how he creates his poems. This can be liberating and to some it also can be troubling, I am willing to presume. However, the poems I chose to translate of his were ones I believed could be understood by everyone. Although, Juarroz is no longer alive. I’d have to relate this question to a living author I might be reading, however, in trying to answer this question, I realize that I often read “dead authors.”

I will say that I recently began rereading William H. Gass’s In the Heart of the Heart of the Country and Other Stories (1968), a treasure of a book for anyone who becomes engaged with poetic prose. It is a book that saved me once from my own misery when I felt blocked for a period of nine months. I began to open up upon reading Gass’s sentences, perfect in their rhythms, evocative in their poetic description. Reading his work made me feel alive again, to a large degree, and I couldn’t thank him enough for doing what he did for me in my reading of him, which allowed me to enter the world anew as my own Phoenix rising.

Q. What about your current translations speaks to the contemporary social or cultural situation?

That’s an interesting question. An activities director at the care facility Tevis is at who had read my book, If You’re the Dreamer, I’m the Dream: Selected Translations from Rilke’s Book of Hours(Finishing Line Press, 2025), remarked to me that toward the end of this sequence, in the section entitled “The Book of Poverty and Death,” Rilke had written poems that were social protestations, that were actually political poems. “I hadn’t realized Rilke wrote political poems,” she remarked. “Well, yes, he did, and we can use them now!” I answered.

Although, Wislawa Szymborska, a Polish poet who was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1996, is certainly considered a social and political poet, she is one of my favorites. She remains modern though she came of age during WWII. My lead essay in my book, Singing for Nothing: Nonfiction as Literary Memoir (The Operating System, 2018), is referenced in the Wikipedia page regarding Szymborska’s achievements: “All roads will lead you home Poetic Alchemy: Wislawa Szymborska’s Map: Collected and Last Poems by Wally Swist [vacpoetry.org/journal/], 2015.” It is a reasonable place to begin to get to know Szymborska’s understated but powerful work as a poet of world order.

Also, significantly, I can mention Cole Swensen’s prolific and important translations from the French. She is an indispensable translator that is highly recommended. Swensen was awarded the 2025 Stephen Mitchell Excellence in Translation Prize from Green Linden Press for her masterful translation of Pascalle Monnier’s Touche, which “captures something both subtle and insightful about quotidian struggle and the human spirit.”

Q. What contemporary translators should we be reading and why?

There are certainly several I have mentioned earlier. However, I could emphasize the translations of W. S. Merwin for their breadth and resonance. His many translations seem to be ageless and even though his work is now decades old, such as his gorgeous translation of Pablo Neruda’s Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair, Merwin’s translations remain contemporary. I elaborate more on my answer in the question below.

Q. What contemporary translator do you think we should be reading? 

I have been fortunate in knowing several translators throughout my life, including the late Alexander Taylor, who energized Curbstone Press as its main editor and publisher, in his translations of the Danish poet Benny Andersen, published by Princeton University Press. Sandy often enough mentioned translation as a path for me, as well, and championed my trying my hand at it. Also, another colleague and friend, Jonas Zdanys, who is a wonderful translator from the Lithuanian, and who has told me that when he visits Lithuania he “is greeted with rock star status.” How different poets and writers (and translators) are treated in other countries as opposed to ours is something to consider, at least on a sociopolitical basis. Jonas’s translation of Five Lithuanian Women Poets (Vaga, 2002) is a must read.

I also recommend my colleagues David Breeden and Steven Shroeder who I collaborated with in creating a new interpretation of Daodejing, published by Lamar University Press (2015). That project is one of the highlights of my writing career. I will perpetually be grateful to Stephen for inviting me to be a part of the project. I will also be thankful to David for going forward and continuing to collaborate as we have.

Of course, reading any translation of Art Beck’s is a delight due to his diligence and devotion to the craft and art of translation. His aim as a translator is nothing less than a high bar and he brings an integrity to translation that few readers will have experienced before.

I must also include Mark Burrows and his new translation of Rilke’s Duino Elegies (Monkfish, 2026) which explores what I call “Rilke’s radiant darkness” in this masterwork in ways not previously accomplished.

Q. What advice would you give new or aspiring literary translators?

Art Beck once admonished me: “Translating is much more difficult than writing.” That can be considered the first truth of translation. The second truth could be that we as translators need to respect the author’s voice. That would be one of my contributions. Also, practice active humility. You might not dare to practice that out in today’s world but do practice it if and when you decide to take on the responsibilities of translating. You are not working with your own poems, so it is unwise to rewrite them in your own voice, which is, to me, a kind of narcissism. If you need a reminder to assist in ceasing that temptation just think about Trump or Hegseth, both could be described as pugilistic solipsists. They just can’t see anything else but their point of view and will fight anyone who disagrees with them. They’ll make you pay if you don’t buck up and follow them.

That’s no way to treat any author’s work if you want to translate them. To translate an author you love listen to their voice in the poem, hear its music, sit with that. Read other translations of the same author over time. I’ve been reading Rilke for nearly fifty-five years and have read many translators’ work. By doing this, I’ve heard Rilke now in different octaves. It not only prepared me to create my own translations of Rilke’s poems but also it provided me a kind of discernment in selecting which poems I might translate. It also offered me a path to what work I could commit to. I love The Book of Hours. Did we need another translation, or a selected translation of the work, as I provided? No. However, even with so many other translations of that Rilke, I heard the poem differently than others, which made me take the risk of translating it. I even lost most of it when my computer crashed and I nearly gave up on the project but methodically went back to my emails to publishers to whom I had submitted some of those translations and discovered I could rescue about a third of the fifty-five or so poems I had sweated over. Then I risked translating another dozen or so that I loved to include in the eventual book I would go on and have the good fortune to publish.

However, that is another translator’s truth you may want to practice: perseverance. It takes a lot of perseverance to keep on weighing nuances as a translator, to keep finding whether one syntax is better than another, to have to all too often keep on going back to a German dictionary to check variants, as one needs to do with Rilke, since he uses this practice so often.

It is my experience that if one does listen to the author’s voice then one can at least sometimes translate with a fluidity that the author might have intended, to at least parallel his or her rhythm. So, when on occasion, a translation of yours is accepted for publication, the editor may write that your translation “is not clunky like other translations” that they’ve read, that they’re taking the following translations of yours to publish. Then there may be a partial victory, a triumph of sorts, in that you’ve come close to what your aim was, and in that you will try even more fully to accept the challenge of bringing the work of an author you love to life with a clearer resonance in the world, and to take solace in your having done so to come to think that you’ve become a thread in the fabric of literature itself by the contribution you’ve made. Once again, we can’t forget active humility.

In my long observation, it’s really all about the love.