Jonathan Cohen

Jonathan Cohen is a poet, translator, essayist, and scholar of inter-American literature. His poems and essays have appeared widely, including The New York Times, The Hudson Review, The Literary Review, The American Voice, and Street Magazine. He has translated Latin American poets Ernesto Cardenal ("Pluriverse"), Enrique Lihn ("The Dark Room"), and Pedro Mir ("Countersong to Walt Whitman"), among others. His vision of the Americas as a New World experiment in multiculturalism is articulated in his much-read essay "The Naming of America: Fragments We've Shored Against Ourselves," first published in The American Voice. He is the author of pioneering critical works on Muna Lee ("A Pan-American Life") and Pablo Neruda ("Neruda in English"). His compilation of William Carlos Williams's translations of Spanish-language poetry, "By Word of Mouth," published in 2011 by New Directions, contributes a new dimension to the poet's canon ("Our notion of Williams's work in 'the American idiom' should be forever broadened and changed because of 'By Word of Mouth.'" — William Carlos Williams Review). His acclaimed edition of Williams's translation of the Spanish Golden Age novella "The Dog and the Fever" (2018) shows how baroque proto-modernism became American modernist innovation. For more, visit jonathancohenweb.com.