“Total Translation” Redux: A New Appraisal of an Older Work

I don’t as a rule call attention to writings about my own works, though the temptation is always there. But there’s a very detailed, very accurate piece just posted on the Poetry Foundation web site – a discussion of my experiments from some years ago with “total translation” & in particular a series of compositions that began as translations from Navajo ritual poetry. The piece, by David Noriega, is titled “The Original Performance Poetry: Jerome Rothenberg's ‘total translations’ of Navajo Horse Songs” – accompanied by audio clips of some early multi-track studio recordings. The URL, for any who want to track it down, is http://www.poetryfoundation.org/journal/article.html?id=236556.

The Horse Songs of course go back to the early 1970s, so it’s my pleasure too to see them still in circulation.