The challenge in analyzing poetry written in another language is that, through translation, some of the original meaning is lost. The English language does not possess all the tools necessary to interpret something best said in Russian or Japanese. A poem, in its original language, displays the style of the poet and the beauty or the poem which can be literally lost in translation. Through the poet's literary devices and use of language, a poem comes to life, the quality which is lacking in most translations of the same. Because the meaning of the original poem is unknown, one can't judge a translation on its proximity to the original. A translation is deemed superior based on whether or not the poem sounds like a translation and how well the author preserves the beauty that the poem was intended to have. .
George Reavey's "First Ice", a translation of Andrei Voznesensky's Russian poem, can easily be pin pointed as a translation. The poem possesses a specific rhythm where sentences end after completing a specific thought. "She breathes on her thin palms. Her fingers are like icicles. She wears earrings." Reavey's style of writing creates a start-and-stop rhythm which one would expect to see in a bullet-point-list or an encyclopedia. "First Ice" lacks the fluidity of the words and the coherence of the thoughts which connect one verse of the poem to the next. The sentence "She wears earrings," just does not seem to belong in the poem. Granted that it is present in the original poem, Reavey simply states the fact directly to the reader, rather than taking advantage of the flexibility of the English vocabulary and creating a heated and moving poem. He further emphasizes his direct approach in his translation by means of his diction. The mystery of the poem is gone in the way Reavey directly states what is occurring in the poem, with the absence of double meanings and metaphors.
