reassemblances

This text has at its origins in a quotation of Walter Benjamin: "translation does not find itself in the center of the language forest but on the outside facing the wooded ridge; it calls into it without entering, aiming at that single spot where the echo is able to give, in its own language, the reverberation of the work in the alien one" ("The Task of the Translator" [1923], in Illuminations (1968)). Around the time I encountered these thoughts on translation, I began reading the poetry of Hwang Jin-I and Otagaki Rengetsu. I thought I might attempt some translations. I was fond of some of the poems that came out of that process working with multiple electronic "translators." And I was not discouraged by the feedback I received in workshops. Considering the guidance I received from translator and professor Jen Hofer, I realized that in terms of translations, these pieces were failures. Still, I and others were interested in the product of the process, so I continued. The result is this chapbook of reassemblances, poems of a non-existent life, based in part on my own.
-Edward Wells