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Title: why why why
Review: Kabir's poems have been translated into English by many people.Read any one of them. But don't read this contamination, this desecration of Kabir's beautiful poems. Bly isn't translating from any original language. He translates from an English translation that he himself considers "hopeless" into his own version of them. What can he hope to accomplish by this? Aside from the fact that the translations he works from were done by Rabindranath Tagore and he is unable to appreciate what are, in my opinion, some of the most beautiful poems ever, how many times removed from the truth (to paraphrase Plato) is he trying to get? He admittedly violates chronology by replacing "a deadly weapon" with "a loaded gun". He should just have used that gun to shoot his manuscript to shreds. To all aspiring poets, never ever do to another man's work what Robert Bly has done here to Kabir and Tagore.
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