The Refrain of Other People’s Lives by Arnold Jansen op de Haar and translated by John Irons

This is poetry from Netherlands.

The Refrain of Other People’s Lives by Arnold Jansen op de Haar translated by John Irons is published by Holland Park Press. This is a Book originally written in Dutch. This was published in 2017.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781907320729E12.

The Refrain of Other People’s Lives, by Arnold Jansen op de Haar and translated by John Irons, is a title that immediately suggests overhearing. A refrain belongs to song and recurrence; other people’s lives belong to rumor, memory, empathy, and distance. This Dutch collection seems made for readers interested in how lyric poetry can listen outward without pretending to possess what it hears. I would expect poems concerned with war memory, civic atmosphere, and the echo of histories that belong both to the speaker and not entirely to the speaker. Irons’s translation gives English readers a path into a book whose appeal may lie in that tension: the self is present, but it is not the only music.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.