From this process has emerged a parallel process of translating traditional working and living values into a new political and economic power - a power increasingly based upon the strength of money and those material things money can purchase.

There must of course be a relationship between translating and making poems of your own but what it is I just don't know.

I was always interested in French poetry sort of as a sideline to my own work I was translating contemporary French poets. That kind of spilled out into translation as a way to earn money pay for food and put bread on the table.

I guess I wanted to leave America for awhile. It wasn't that I wanted to become an expatriate or just never come back I needed some breathing room. I'd already been translating French poetry I'd been to Paris once before and liked it very much and so I just went.

Is there any purpose to translating poetry? A poem does not contain information of importance like a signpost or a warning notice.

Whatever the medium there is the difficulty challenge fascination and often productive clumsiness of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials.

It's such a diversion to be constantly thinking of better ways I can teach people math that my hunger is for that really for new ways of translating the beauty of it.