Circumference Reading: Poetry in Translation

A journal devoted to translations of poetry from all times and places, Circumference is associated with the Center for Literary Translation at Columbia University. The editorial content provides a showcase for translators and languages as well as for poets, and each issue on display at the Housing Works Bookstore Café, where this reading took place, contained so many tastes of world civilization as to suggest an attempt to reconstitute the Tower of Babel. The 35 or so individuals in attendance despite a drenching night rain overflowed the available chairs, and some of us had to stand or to perch on a step of the bookstore’s spiral staircase.

      The...