Episode 56: Jennifer Kronovet
Commonplace: Conversations with Poets (and Other People)
English - July 26, 2018 10:00 - 1 hour - ★★★★★ - 206 ratingsArts Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet and translator Jennifer Kronovet about translating the Chinese poet Liu Xia, choosing a pseudonym, the ethics of translation, negotiating appropriation, how to engage other cultures when you’re not from that culture, translating Yiddish poet Celia Dropkin, how to pull an older work into the present, being a Jew in Berlin, learning a new language to find your own lineage, an amazing coincidence about a small town in Romania, Paul Celan, Charles K. Bliss, a perfect language you can’t speak, language diversity, kung fu, writing a sci-fi novel, the body, prepositions, the Sapir Worth Hypothesis, mother-linguists, raising children in another country and language, being with someone who is learning to talk, the trucks in China, and much more.
Rachel Zucker speaks with poet and translator Jennifer Kronovet about translating the Chinese poet Liu Xia, choosing a pseudonym, the ethics of translation, negotiating appropriation, how to engage other cultures when you’re not from that culture, translating Yiddish poet Celia Dropkin, how to pull an older work into the present, being a Jew in Berlin, learning a new language to find your own lineage, an amazing coincidence about a small town in Romania, Paul Celan, Charles K. Bliss, a perfect language you can’t speak, language diversity, kung fu, writing a sci-fi novel, the body, prepositions, the Sapir Worth Hypothesis, mother-linguists, raising children in another country and language, being with someone who is learning to talk, the trucks in China, and much more.
Extra Resources for Episode 56Books by Jennifer Kronovet
The Wug Test (Ecco, 2016)
Case Study: With (Above/Ground Press, 2015)
Empty Chairs (co-translator, with Ming Di, as Jennifer Stern, Graywolf, 2015)
Awayward (BOA Editions, 2009)
Other Books and Writers Mentioned in the EpisodeNumber the Stars by Lois Lowry (HMH Books for Young Readers, re-printed in 2011)
Metaphors We Live By by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (University of Chicago Press, 2003)
Alphabet by Ingrid Christensen (New Directions, 2001)
Faith Jones and Sam Solomon, co-translators of Dropkin
Other Relevant Links“Jennifer Kronovet studied Yiddish so she could communicate with the dead”, by Patrick Cox via PRI
The Wug Test (the actual test, not Jenny’s book)
Hopscotch Bookstore/Reading Room
“Hey Allen Ginsberg Where Have You Gone and What Would You Think of my Drugs?” by Rachel Zucker
George Lakoff
“Variations on the Right to Remain Silent” by Anne Carson, from A Public Space, Issue 7
“Anonymous Sources” by Eliot Weinberger