Armenian Poetry of Our Time

How does one begin to review an anthology of a century of poetry by over a hundred Armenian poets? Perhaps first by considering the translator—the one who selects the particular poems for translation from the pool of possibilities—which, in this case, is especially vast and deep given the richness of the Armenian poetry tradition. In a recent interview with Artsvi Bakhchinyan of the Armenian Weekly, Diana Der-Hovanessian, author of twenty-three books of poetry, including ten books of translations, said she translates poems she wishes she herself had written, or poems that are “pivotal in some historic aspect, and must be done.”[i]Translation is a precarious art—dependent on such a range of niggling and elusive variables, from insightful reading of the poet’s original intent and meaning to sensitivity to the nuances of words and syntax in not one but two languages and cultures. The ten thousand choices made and serendipitous accidents that occur while composing a poem are reapplied by another hand and eye to another canvas with a different available palette. It is all tricky business. In the end, the reader of translated poetry must, as Tranströmer said, believe in translation.