Hearing Prose and Poetry

When it comes to translating poetry I thought Dan Fitzgerald's presentation at BT 2013 last fall was really helpful. For those who were not there, in super brief, he said when approaching a particular culture's poetries, the translator should be open and flexible to the diverse characteristics of what constitutes a "poetic line" in the world's cultures. In his paper, he illustrated just how diverse the characteristics of the poetic line can be by comparing several different cultural manifestations of the poetic line. I think there is room for greater nuance of the poetic line, poetic genre in Hebrew / Greek and also in the host languages.