Read some German poetry, it's good for you.
Translation is difficult, an art form, really. There can be good and bad translations, but what happens when you encounter a writer whose work purportedly cannot be expressed in another language?
This is the case with famous German poet Rainer Maria Rilke. Lord knows there are many bad translations of his poetry, so it's with great pleasure that I stumbled across this article.
It turns out Edward Snow, one of the better Rilke translators, has produced a definitive volume of his work.
This is fortunate, because the English-speaking world has been privy to bad translations, incomplete ones, etc. Plus, you can't beat the no-nonsense title: "The Poetry of Rilke." This isn't a collection of favorites. This is the whole shebang, surveying all of his most important later works (the best ones, mind you).
Of course, you could label a lot of poets as untranslatable. Snow comes pretty close, though, and you've got to give credit where it's due.
--Ricky
