I often find that the first barrier to reading translated poetry is not the language itself but a hesitation: will I be reading the poet, the translator, or both? Over the years I’ve learned that the best way into translated poetry is to lean into that uncertainty. A skilful translator is not an invisible machine but a companion — someone who listens, argues, and answers back to a poem in another tongue. Below I offer three translators I return to again and again, the editions I’d suggest you start with, and the things I pay attention to when a poem has been carried across language.

Anne Carson — for lyric intimacy and dazzling strangeness

Anne Carson occupies a curious space: she’s a poet who translates, and her translations feel like original poems that also happen to be translations. If you’ve never read her work, start with her edition of Sappho (e.g., If Not, Winter). Carson works with fragmentary texts, and her decisions — to leave gaps, to choose a spare modern diction, to add brief prose notes — make the experience of reading an ancient poet both immediate and uncanny.

Why read Carson first?

  • She models how translation can be an interpretative act: her line breaks, enjambments and typographical choices are themselves readings.
  • Her translations foreground the lyric voice. If you want to feel the intimacy of a single person addressing love, loss and desire across millennia, Carson is a reliable guide.
  • Her accompanying essays and notes are miniature lessons in classical scholarship turned lively and readable — they reveal how a translator negotiates uncertainty.

    • How to read Carson: read slowly and aloud. Treat the fragments as questions rather than puzzles to complete. Notice where she preserves lacunae and where she invents connective tissue; that silence is often the point.

    Robert Fagles — for narrative sweep and the music of performance

    If you’re interested in poetry as performance — lines that want to be spoken, epics that ride on rhythm and rhetorical energy — Robert Fagles is a dependable place to start. His translations of Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad, and his rendering of Sophocles, helped to redefine how contemporary Anglophone readers approach ancient verse. Fagles’s diction is warm and muscular; he attends to the narrative pace while shaping idiomatically English lines.

    Why read Fagles?

  • He makes long, complex poems feel alive: the momentum of the line carries you forward.
  • His editorial apparatus — introductions, notes, glossaries — are excellent entry points for readers who want context without tedium.
  • Hearing a Fagles translation read aloud often reveals its strengths: cadence, repetition, and rhetorical propulsion.

    • How to read Fagles: if possible, listen to a recording of the translation as you read (many public libraries and audiobook platforms have readings). Pay attention to his choices for set-piece speeches and catalogue passages — where English needs a breath, he gives one.

    W. S. Merwin — for a meditative, elegiac sensitivity

    W. S. Merwin was an American poet whose translations — especially from Spanish (and earlier in his career, from French and other sources) — are infused with his own lyrical sensibility: sparse, often unpunctuated lines that emphasize fluid image and associative logic. His translations of modern Spanish-language poets (and his versions of ancient texts later in his career) have a quiet insistence: they aim less to reproduce a recognizable voice than to recreate a tonal field.

    Why read Merwin?

  • His translations are bold in their minimalism: he strips punctuation and lets lineation dictate rhythm, which can be transformative for readers used to denser prosody.
  • He excels at elegiac moods — if you want translations that linger on absence, memory and reverie, he’s a fine companion.
  • Merwin is also an excellent poet in his own right; reading his translations alongside his original work illuminates his aesthetic choices.

    • How to read Merwin: give yourself silence around the poems. Let the unpunctuated lines open and close in your breath. Compare a passage (if you can) with another translator’s version to see how different formal choices shape meaning.

    How to choose which translation to read

    There are too many approaches to translation to pretend there’s a single correct one. But when you’re starting out, a few practical rules help:

  • Look for translators who are poets themselves. They often bring craft and sensitivity to lineation and sound. (All three translators above are also poets.)
  • Check whether the edition includes notes or a preface. I don’t always read every note, but a thoughtful introduction will tell you what problems the translator encountered and what strategies they used.
  • Compare translations where possible. Reading two versions of the same poem side by side is the quickest way to learn what translation actually does: it highlights lexical choices, rhythm, and what a translator is willing to sacrifice or preserve.

    • A little chart to help you decide quickly

    Translator Best for Suggested starting text Reading tip
    Anne Carson Lyric fragments, intimate ancient voices If Not, Winter: Fragments of Sappho Read aloud; honour gaps and silences
    Robert Fagles Narrative epics, performative verse The Odyssey or The Iliad Listen to recordings to catch cadence
    W. S. Merwin Minimalist, elegiac modern voices Selections of Spanish-language poetry (check individual editions) Allow space; compare with denser translations

    Practical reading strategies I use and recommend

    When I approach translated poetry I try to do three small things every time:

  • I slow down my reading speed. Translation often compresses cultural detail into compact images; rushing past them loses texture.
  • I let a poem sit in my head. After a first reading I’ll put the book down and return to a stanza later. Translations sometimes need two passes to open.
  • I seek paratext. Prefaces, translator’s notes and even blurbs can be illuminating — not as definitive answers but as revealing arguments.

    • If you’re learning a language, pair the translation with the original if you can. Even a non-fluent reader gains from seeing how line breaks, cognates and word order change the music of a poem. Online resources like the Poetry Foundation, Modern Poetry in Translation and publisher pages often provide bilingual texts or helpful commentary.

    Some invitations, not edicts

    Finally: treat these recommendations as invitations. Translation is a conversation that keeps growing. You might fall for the muscular storytelling of Fagles, then be unsettled and delighted by Carson’s fragmentary modernism, or you might find Merwin’s quiet tones are what you crave after a long day. Whichever you start with, allow yourself to follow what surprises you — sometimes that is the best compass for discovery.