In Praise of the Unfinished: Selected Poems by Julia Hartwigtranslated by John and Bogdana CarpenterKnopf, 2008

What I like about these poems are the moments of clear calm in them, like this line from the first poem, “Fortune-Telling from the Seabed”: “Transparent water reveals the clear constellations of pebbles resting on the bottom” (p 3), or “That August night it poured stars like glass” (p 20). Large parts of this collection didn’t quite resonate: too much melancholy, too much rhapsodizing? The poems about art are the ones I like best: “Translating American Poets,” with the first line, “They might not care for such a change of place—” (p 15), or “The Transfer of Power,” with its idea of “the land of sweet France taken into art’s loving captivity,” trees caught in paintings by Corot, Sisley, and others (p 21), or Old Fashions, about the art (and craft) of writing itself, or “A Thank-You Note,” about Vivaldi (p 122). Also pleasing: “An Attempt,” which is set in the garden for the blind at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and “Tell Me Why This Hurry”, with its litany of flowers.