An Anthology of World Poetry

Compiled by Alīse Elsiņa; artwork by Artūrs Apinis and Alīse Zvirbule.

Some of the early translations by Knuts Skujenieks were published in the monumental Anthology of World Poetry. Almost all of the translations (except for Hungarian, Bulgarian, Romanian and few other languages) were translated from the originals. Amongst the such distinguished Latvian writers and literary classics as Juris Alunāns, Eduards Veidenbaums, Rūdolfs Blaumanis, Rainis, Aspazija, Vilis Plūdons, Jānis Sudrabkalns, Ēriks Ādamsons and others, also lots of Latvian SSR poets made their debut as translators (Jāzeps Osmanis, Arvīds Skalbe, Alfrēds Krūklis, Rihards Rudzītis, Bruno Saulītis, Andrejs Balodis, Andris Vējāns, Pēteris Sils, Laimons Pēlmanis, Ārija Elksne, Mirdza Ķempe, Olga Lisovska, Jūlijs Vanags, Egils Plaudis and many others).

Knuts Skujenieks translated a few poems by an influential American poet Walt Whitman – "To a Certain Cantatrice"; "I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing" and "Sometimes with One I Have". Exactly fifty years later the same poems were included in the bilingual edition of Whitman’s “Leaves of Grass”, compiled by a Latvian poet Kārlis Vērdiņš.

The anthology includes Indian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Italian, Spanish, French, Belgian, Romanian, German, English, American, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Turkish, Chinese and Japanese poetry.