Reviews for Selected Poems: Rabindrath Tagore

The average rating for Selected Poems: Rabindrath Tagore based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2011-09-04 00:00:00 Gerald Randall The problem with reading Tagore is that, if you know anything about the man, it's difficult to raise your face from a prostrated we're-not-worthy position long enough to make sense of what's on the page. The first non-Western winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Tagore was a polymath: painter, poet, political theorist, physicist. This is a dude who chatted it up with Einstein. That's an awful lot of impressed to bring to any reading of verse, particularly one rendered in translation. From what little I've read on the subject, it seems Tagore's own translation of his work from Bengali to English were less than successful, hence William Radice trying his hand at it here. The results are mixed. Radice's introduction and extremely thorough afternotes (which both explicate the poems and discuss why he chose certain phrases, noting any deviations from the strictly faithful translation)are both interesting and helpful. The poetry itself fares slightly less well, though the strength of the images wins through more often than not. But those same marvelous afternotes reveal the sometimes extensive liberties Radice takes, which leaves one wondering just whom one is truly reading. Interesting, but unlikely to inflame those new to Tagore.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-02-05 00:00:00 Laurie Mullen poems in the vein or Rumi and Hafiz, subtly political. lyrical.