Letters to a Young Poet

Art Beck is a poet, essayist, and translator whose work has appeared in book and magazine form since the early 1970s. His Opera Omnia Or, a Duet for Sitar and Trombone, versions of the sixth-century CE North African Roman poet Luxorius (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2013), won the 2013 Northern California Book Award for translated poetry. Mea Roma, a 140-poem "meditative sampling" of Martial's epigrams, was published by Shearsman Books in 2018, and was also awarded Honorable Mention in the American Literary Translators Association 2018 Cliff Becker Prize. In 2019, his poetic sequence The Insistent Island was published by Magra Books in its annual chapbook series. From 2009 through 2012, Beck was a regular contributor to Rattle, with essays on translating poetry under the rubric "The Impertinent Duet." His articles on the translator's art have appeared in Jacket2, Your Impossible Voice, The Journal of Poetics Research, PN Review and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He makes his home in San Francisco.