Rick Simonson

Prize Translation
July 29, 2008

It doesn't take much for things to get by, but it had totally eluded my attentions that the thirty-year-old National Poetry Series - which aids and abets publication of unpublished books via a jury process - had decided to add a publication prize for translation.

The debut recipient of this award - the Robert Fagles Translation Prize - was first encountered in Farrar's fall 2008 catalog. At FSG's delightful BEA dinner - full of some of the better fiction writers around - editor (and poet/translator himself) Jonathan Galassi, when asked about French poet Marie Etienne and the (esteemed) Marilyn Hacker translation of her book, King of a Hundred Horsemen, waxed quite effusively.

Even better, in short order following BEA, there was in the mail a galley copy of this forthcoming November release, a nicely remembered gesture followed through despte the distractions of a full book show and getting back to New York from L.A.

Unlike the National Poetry Series' domestic selections - which have often been debut or early-career books - Ms. Etienne's King of a Hundred Horsemen, or Rio des cent cavaliers, first published in 2002 by Flammarion (selected for this prize by Robert Hass),  comes well along in a writing life that's seen her write novels (some laced with elements of memoir and essay), numerous books of poetry, and do vital work in leading French theatre companies.

To be published bilingually in November by Farrar, this book's sequences read like a single work, albeit one of shifting voices, landscapes, times, and places. There's a narrative element at work, though it's one that alludes,eludes, and leaps at times. 

Ms. Etienne spent her childhood in Indochina during World War II (much the same time and part of the world Marguerite Duras would make memorable in her work), and lived there and elsewhere (Dakar) growing up. The book begins with a vivid passage of memory, that of going through the Suez Canal (going by ship) as a young girl. 

Such sequences are so alive - it's the shifting to and from those that make for an interesting resonance. The whole of a life (hers) is ventured through. Having read it once, I am about to plunge in again.

Here are hopes that Marie Etienne makes it to the U.S. for this book's publication - it's a book deserving of significant attention when it appears - and for more of her work to be published here in the U.S. If this is any indication of where the National Poetry Series might go with this translation prize, it will be a major boon for poetry readers here (including some who don't yet know they will be poetry readers).

Posted by Rick Simonson on July 29, 2008 | Comments (0)