Michael Palma
An American Poet and Translator

Born: 1945

Languages:

Very little is written about Michael Palma except to list his books and accomplishments. In an interview he did with NPR he explains that he spoke no Italian, though his uncle did. He is able to read Italian, teaching himself prior to releasing his translation of The Man I pretend to Be: The Colloquies and Selected Poems of Guido Gozzano in 1981. Palma went on to have 20 books of translations published. “I didn’t originally set out to do a complete translation. In 1994, after participating in the first annual Inferno reading at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York, I decided to translate my own cant (VI) for the following year’s reading and again (XIII) the year after that. At that point I decided that I might as well go ahead and do a complete Inferno” (Russell)

Key Points Regarding Palma’s Translation:

Palma makes a point to translate formal poetry in the meter and rhyming pattern of the original poem so he used Terza Rima

“I would cite Ciardi and Mandelbaum as demonstrations that a translation of Dante should be a fluent, natural poem in English, not a trot- A literal translation of a foreign language text for use by students, especially in a surreptitious way- or a museum piece”

Like Sayers, Palma used Singleton as a principal source

“…[R]ather than begin with a hierarchy of values which dictates that some of the components of the original must be downplayed, or even eliminated, at the expense of others, I hope to salvage as high a percentage as I can of all the elements of the poem. In practical terms, this approach means that every problem of translation must be solved not by the unflinching imposition of some abstract theory or principle, but by the immediate needs, in context, of that particular moment of the poem.” (Palma)