Reading the World 2008: New European Poets

This is the tenth Reading the World 2008 title we’re covering. Write-ups of the other titles can be found here. And information about the Reading the World program—a special collaboration between publishers and independent booksellers to promote literature in translation throughout the month of June—is available at the official RTW website. There’s also a podcast discussing RTW available from “World Books.”:http://www.theworld.org/pod/worldbooks/wbpod5.mp3

New European Poets is a perfect example of the type of books Reading the World was created to promote. Over 300 large pages of poetry from more than 45 countries/regions (including Sapmi!) and a few hundred poets. The breadth of this anthology is impressive and admirable, and taken as a whole this is an incredibly valuable resource for anyone interested in reading (or publishing) European poetry.

The introduction by Wayne Miller and Kevin Prufer (the two primary editors who were assisted by twenty-three regional editors) is very interesting, especially the explanation they give of the goal of the anthology:

Our goal in putting together this anthology was not to pretend to present a comprehensive view of European poetry today—that would be impossible. Europe has nearly 750 million inhabitants and, depending on how you count, more than forty languages. In organizing an anthology simply of one nation’s poets, it’s difficult enough to determine, without the benefit of hindsight, which writers are important and will one day be influential. An anthology of European poets presents a whole host of additional problems—questions of national representation, translations, intranational languages and identifications, the politics of national boundaries, and so on. Nonetheless, we felt that it was important to bring this wholly imperfect endeavor to an American audience for three primary reasons: (1) the trajectory of European poetry has continued beyond the European poets known to an American audience; (2) culturally and historically Europe is radically differnt than it was just a few decades ago, and thus a reexamination of Europe’s poetry seems due; and (3) American poetry readers and poets seem to be less engaged with European poetry than they once were, which is a shame.

Right on.