Lost in Translation Summary
James Merrill

Lost in Translation Summary

“Lost in Translation” was first published in the New Yorker on April 6, 1974. It later became part of James Merrill's collection Divine Comedies, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1976. This work, and the subsequent award, helped cement Merrill's reputation as one of the top young American poets.

The poem is a complex study of loss and the artistic rendering of experience. Merrill presents fragments of experience that become apt metaphors of loss...

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