On Translating Daniel Durand

On Sunday, September 14, 2025, I sent my friend Santiago Sorter a message on WhatsApp asking if he could recommend any humorous Argentine poets. (In another life, I used to write and perform stand up comedy in Buenos Aires, and Santi would help me sharpen my jokes.) Santi, who is himself an artist, writer, and translator, replied with a voice note, which I will translate from the Spanish: “I have several ideas for you, but it’s Sunday, and we Argentines are actually quite fond of our Sundays. So, I really think it’s out of line for you to even ask me such a thing, but it’s fine, it’s not the first or last time you disappoint me. I’ll answer tomorrow, when it’s appropriate. I hope you’re doing well, kisses.” I wrote back saying that in the United States, we never stop working. Santi replied that I was a liar, and that what we never stop doing is exploiting the global south and complaining about how stressed we are. Nevertheless, that same Sunday, Santi recommended I read Daniel Durand.

The first poem of Durand’s that I read online, “Luz y oscuridad” (“Light and Darkness”), endeared him to me immediately. In it, he sends a “mental” warning to the ants living in his apartment, reminding them that it is his own poverty that keeps them “delicately united.” (During my stand-up days, I used to do an entirely unprintable routine about the ants with whom I shared a bedroom.)

In the prologue to his 2024 collection, Lupa de la inmersión, which includes the poem “January Afternoon” (“Atardecer en enero”), Durand cites Du Fu and William Carlos Williams as his great teachers, and then, with a nod to Borges, insists that readers will easily detect which of his poems are “dufunian,” and which are “williamsian.” Sadly, and perhaps to the detriment of these translations, I must confess that I have not read enough Du Fu or Williams to make the distinction myself. In my ignorance, Durand’s poems remain strikingly “durandian.” Reading (and translating) them, I am transported to his wry and melancholy Buenos Aires, where Durand has lived most of his life since 1983.

In addition to being a writer and teacher, Durand has also translated work by Han Dong, Alice Notley, and Valzhyna Mort. When I sent Durand my versions of his poems, he graciously informed me that he did not wish to correct them, and that he subscribed to Dong’s philosophy that “translations are authentic creations in their own right; the original is only the spiritual source and the basis for the translation.” 

In translating Durand’s poetry, I have only tried to reproduce the delight I feel in reading it. I am grateful to Santi for introducing me to such a rich “spiritual source,” and to Daniel, for trusting me with his work.