Sometimes people tell me that my poetry and translations are useless. My response is that some things are good whether or not they are useful. The Yosemite Park is useless, but there is merit to it. The Sistine Chapel is useless, but there is merit to it. Same with Russian poetry translations.

Elvis Costello put out an album called “All this useless beauty.” Oscar Wiled said that all art is quite useless. That may be the case.. However maybe utility is not all it is about. Useless or not, magnificent things have come out of art, and they are worthy of respect.

In case of nature, it has in it things of much greater richness and variety than anything that people have created or can re-create. Which means that it is wrong to see it as only resources. Until you can re-create the Amazonian rainforest you have no business burning it down. This is the case whether it is a creation of God or a product of billions of years of evolution. In either case, it is full of vast richness and beauty, and it is richness and beauty that people cannot at this time re-create.

Once again, some things are good whether or not they are useful. Some things possess an intrinsic value that make them valuable in themselves. This is the case with Yosemite Park; this is the case with Sistine Chapel; this is the case with the works of Marina Tsvetayeva and Igor Severyanin.

Translating such works is far from useless. It is making available for English-speaking audiences the treasures of Russian culture. It is making one’s contribution to the civilization. And that is a task well done whatever the degree of its usefulness.