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    Against Translation
    Against Translation
    Against Translation
    Ebook100 pages40 minutes

    Against Translation

    By Alan Shapiro

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    About this ebook

    “Searing, hauntingly sad, often hilarious, these poems . . . reconnect the circuits of the soul.” —Martha C. Nussbaum, University of Chicago

    We often ask ourselves what gets lost in translation—not just between languages, but in the everyday trade-offs between what we experience and what we are able to say about it. But the visionary poems of this collection invite us to consider: what is loss, in translation?

    Writing at the limits of language—where “the signs loosen, fray, and drift”—Alan Shapiro probes the startling complexity of how we confront absence and the ephemeral, the heartbreak of what once wasn’t yet and now is no longer, of what (like racial prejudice and historical atrocity) is both omnipresent and elusive.

    Through fine-grained poems, Shapiro tells of subtle bereavements: a young boy is shamed for the first time for looking “girly”; an ailing old man struggles to visit his wife in a nursing home; or a woman dying of cancer watches her friends enjoy themselves in her absence. Throughout, this collection traverses the imperfect language of loss—moving against the current in the direction of the utterly ineffable.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateMay 2, 2019
    ISBN9780226613642
    Against Translation
    Author

    Alan Shapiro

    Alan Shapiro, Ph.D. is author of the best-selling, Golf's Mental Hazards (Fireside, 1996). Highly acclaimed for his insightful and humorous perspective on the psychology of golf, Dr. Shapiro serves as consultant to The Golf School, based in Mt. Snow, Vermont. He maintains his residence and private-practice in Albany, New York.

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      Book preview

      Against Translation - Alan Shapiro

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