Saturday, May 22, 2010

Classicizing Chicago

'Poetics of translation and translated poetics: ancient and contemporary'

Reginald Gibbons is a poet, fiction writer, translator, literary critic, and Professor of English and Classics. His 2008 book of poems, Creatures of a Day (LSU) was a Finalist for the National Book Award. That year he also published a new book of translations: Sophocles, Selected Poems: Odes and Fragments (Princeton). His most recent book is Slow Trains Overhead: Chicago Poems and Stories (Chicago, 2010). Gibbons has translated Selected Poems of Luis Cernuda (California, 1977; reprint Sheep Meadow Press, 1999); Guillén on Guillén: The Poetry and the Poet (with A. L. Geist; Princeton, 1979); and Euripides' Bakkhai (Oxford Univ. Press, 2001) and Sophocles' Antigone (Oxford, 2003), both of the latter with Charles Segal. His current projects include a work on 20th century and contemporary Russian poetry, co-authored with Ilya Kutik, including essays and translations, and a book of essays on poetry.