Join us as we count down to ALTA42: Sight and Sound with the National Translation Award in Poetry and Prose long- and shortlisted titles! We will be featuring the titles in alphabetical order alongside blurbs penned by our judges for the National Translation Awards in Poetry and Prose. This year’s prose judges are Bonnie Huie, Charlotte Mandell, and Jeffrey Zuckerman. This year’s judges for poetry are Anna Deeny Morales, Cole Heinowitz, and Sholeh Wolpe.

For quick reference, you may find the NTA longlists here, and the NTA shortlists here. Today we’re shining the spotlight on Poetry NTA shortlisted title Robert the Devil: 

Robert the Devil
by Anonymous
translated from the French by Samuel N. Rosenberg
(Penn State University Press)

Robert the Devil is Samuel N. Rosenberg’s first Modern English translation of Robert le Diable, an anonymous, thirteenth-century French romance. Rosenberg has rendered a poetic masterpiece through subtle end, internal, and forced rhymes that are honed to ring and glint, reverberate and resound throughout this finely tuned work. This is a text to be spoken and heard, and you cannot help but do this because it sounds incessantly even after you put it down. The rhythmic, intricate tight weave of Rosenberg’s poetry translation keeps the text moving, relieving the weight of its own narrative heft.