Facsimiles of Time: Essays of Poetry and Translation

W.J. Keith is a retired professor of English at the University of Toronto and author A Sense of Style: Studies in the Art of Fiction in English-Speaking Canada.

Eric Ormsby has been a librarian (which means that he loves books), is
currently a professor of Islamic studies (which means that he loves
learning), and has published four impressive volumes of poems (which
means that he loves language). All three loves are abundantly
illustrated in this superb collection of essays devoted to poetry and to
translation.

His range, first of all, is remarkable. He writes of American poets
(Hart Crane, Marianne Moore), British poets (Keats, Yeats, Geoffrey
Hill), Canadian poets (David Solway, Pat Lowther, Roo Borson). Writers
in translation include Kafka, Musil, Borges, Montale, and Umberto Saba.
A separate section surveys translations of Arabic poetry. He thereby
reveals himself as expert not only in English and Arabic, but in German,
Spanish, and Italian.

But there is more. The book opens with a formal lecture entitled
“Poetry as Isotope: The Hidden Life of Words” and ends with an
extremely funny yet movingly poignant memoir, “The Place of
Shakespeare in a House of Pain,” in which Ormsby tells of his
childhood in a house where quotations were bandied about in crazy but
unforgettable prodigality, therefore explaining his lifelong
preoccupation with language, which he defines, simply but sufficiently,
as “the ultimate mystery.”

Here at last is a Canadian (albeit U.S.-born) critic who concentrates
wholeheartedly on the literary aspects of writing. He does not offer
solemn pronouncements on content but invariably discusses how the
subject is communicated in all the rich resources that language
provides. Translation is especially important here, because linguistic
sensitivity is at least as important a quality in a translator as
complete understanding. Above all, Ormsby writes with lucidity,
elegance, and wit. His subject matter may sound erudite, even in some
cases esoteric, but his scholarly enthusiasms prove infectious. On
finishing one of his essays, one wants to embark immediately on a
reading of the material under discussion—and of how many critics
nowadays can one honestly say that?

This, then, is a joyous book for anyone genuinely interested in poetry
and the art of verse.