“. . .Bang worked on the project for six years after being inspired by Caroline Bergvall’s poem, Via (48 Dante Variations), which is composed entirely of those first three lines from 47 different translations.
‘How might the lines sound if I were to put them into colloquial English? What if I were to go further and add elements of my own poetic style?’ Bang writes in her note on the translation. ‘Would it sound like a cover song, the words of the original unmistakably there, but made unfamiliar by the fact that someone else’s voice has its own characteristics? Could it be, like covers sometimes are, a tribute that pays homage to the original, while at the same time radically departing from it?'” [. . .] –Mike Melia, PBS Newshour, November 2, 2012
Contributed by Julie Heyman
