This sounds so obvious as not to warrant mention, but we tend to take as given so much besides language's fundamental capacities when we talk about or write poetry. There are constant decisions that we don't register as such—e.g. "Who is the subject?" and "What is the point of view?", rather than "Does there need to be a subject?" These kinds of unexamined "writerly" assumptions are in fact a snag that some of the translators in this volume get caught on.

Weinberger takes a few of them to task for inserting an "I" in their rendition, when there is no equivalent in the Chinese original. Not because a translation's sole or even primary merit is something like fidelity to the original, but because it is not obvious that these deviations are consciously-made choices. Sometimes they're just a byproduct of a translator unable to see themselves out of the ongoing (maybe interminable?) longue duree of confessional poetry.

So the emphasis is on paring down to words and their arrangement. All other claims are downstream of rhythm, musicality, meter, consonance and assonance, line breaks, parallels between couplets, and images—but always images as evoked by specific linguistic and syntactic decisions. The fundamental elements of prosody.

Weinberger is enthusiastic about translation introducing something new, moving past the aspiration to furnish "merely a window into the original." But to accomplish this well, the new poem must demonstrate an understanding of what it is doing in/with its own language and why—and this confidence and aptitude, or lack thereof, is something he is confident he can discern in four lines.

I won't get into more attempts to paraphrase what he's doing in this book, both because of the obvious irony of doing so and because you can read this book in an afternoon and be happy you did. Your appreciation of and sensitivity to poetry will be enriched.

Final notes:

• The book also features a nice afterword from Octavio Paz. It complements Weinberger's project but also has its own unique concerns, which is what a worthwhile intro or afterword should aim for.

• I'm glad I've read more of Weinberger's work, particularly his essay collection An Elemental Thing, as it helped me contextualize this book and the criticisms it makes. His approach in the Elemental Thing essays is the exact opposite of what he's doing here, in that the subjects vary wildly and there's only a nearly free associative, thin thread that makes them all make sense in the same volume. That book evinced a generosity of spirit and an openness to various modes of being in and understanding human experience. That seems to be Weinberger's default demeanor when writing about the world at large. On the other hand, he is an enormous curmudgeon when it comes to poetry, as seen in this book and a scathing review he wrote in the 80s that I came across. The counterpoint between the two projects makes it clear that he doesn't take up minor quibbles for the sake of it. His pedantry is not only justified on the basis of his knowledge and devotion to verse, but it's also well-earned in that it seems to be unique to this one area. To me, curmudgeonliness about one specific interest registers as sincerity and reveals a depth of attentiveness and care that I find extremely endearing and enlightening.