This paper considers the reception of the Yugoslav poet Vasko Popa (1922-91) in Great Britain. A close examination of this process sheds light on wider issues characterizing the international ...political and cultural landscapes. The discussion is framed by the notion of "translationscape", which is interpreted as implying a dual focus: on both global cultural transmission and the translators' personal experience. These different aspects allow us to examine the intra- and intercultural dynamics of exchange and the way they relate to the position of the translator and the specific choices (s)he makes. These choices reveal the connection between intercultural literary flows as determined by various sociocultural landscapes, translatability and literary value. Although the "manipulation" of literary fame remains a valid concept and the translator has been recognized as a located - and far from neutral - actor, the aesthetic concerns are nevertheless an essential propulsive force with Popa's translators.
Poetic indeterminacy, as understood by theorists such as Marjorie Perloff and Timothy Bahti, has been of great significance in the study of post-World War II English-language poetry. The ...ramifications of such theories for cross-cultural readings of literature remain, however, largely unexplored. Here, Matthews considers the role indeterminacy plays in two poetic works: British poet Ted Hughes's Crow poems and Serbian poet Vasko Popa's Vucja so (Wolf Salt). He shows how the ways these texts have been read in the West demonstrate the pitfalls of applying narrowly deterministic frames of reference to works that straddle and blur cultural boundaries.
Cautery works with the tools of language and archetypes exploring memory, imagination, ecstasy, and suffering as well as life and death. The poems work to cauterize wounds and give scarred shape, but ...shape nonetheless, toward the future.
