As recounted in the memoir-essays and poignant late poems in A Double Life, the distinguished co-founding editor of Field and poet-translator, Stuart Friebert, has led the kind of globe-trotting double life that makes for the stuff of legend.
There are fabled meetings with the likes of G nter Grass in Berlin and Paul Celan in Paris (not to mention the stray run-in with secret police in Bucharest before the fall of Ceausescu ).
But Friebert also includes a sparkling homage to his late colleague, the co-founder of Umbra (with Langston Hughes and Alice Walker), Calvin Hernton.
The volume richly concludes with an expert's guide to teaching literary translation.
Friebert sweeps us off to another time, a parallel universe where societies heed writers and their words, and in that, he has wrought something extraordinary.
'Do you know where this is going?' as one poem playfully asks.
I urge you to read it and see - Cynthia Hogue, author of Revenance and In June the Labyrinth.
Pinyon Publishing A double life: in poetry and translation, paperback/stuart friebert
