SOURCE: "Poetry with an Accent," in American Book Review, Vol. 9, No. 1, January-February, 1987, pp. 22-3.

In the following excerpt, Malkoff discusses some of the problems of Olga Broumas's translation of Elytis's What I Love, but asserts that it does shed light on the original work.

New translations of poems (which, like most of those selected by Olga Broumas for What I Love, have been recently rendered into English by more than competent translators) promise something new. In this respect, Olga Broumas, for better and for worse, does not disappoint. She informs us at the outset that she intends to preserve the strangeness, the foreignness of Elytis's texts. It ought to be, she asserts, "English with an accent."

This raises basic questions. In the very first poem, "Sun the First," a critical sentence is translated: "I don't know anymore the night." Clearly, English with an accent. Broumas's line indeed follows...