The translations and original verse were all clearly written, evenly metered, and well rhymed. So well metered and rhymed in fact that it made me wonder what if anything was lost in translation. A nice mix of Norwegian 19th century and earlier Dutch poems, although the juxtaposition of those two was somewhat odd. A mashup made even added by the inclusion of the translator's own early verse, which doesn't seem to match the consistent tone or quality of the other poems.

3 stars

A lovely selection of early Dutch, & 19th C. Norwegian poems, translated to preserve rhyme scheme & meter. Half the volume consists of the translator’s own poetry, which was not bad but not to my personal taste, & seemed out of place in a book of translated work.

[What I liked:]

•I have enjoyed another collection of (medieval-Renaissance) Dutch poetry in translation, so it’s a treat to be able to read more since I don’t read Dutch myself.

•There is a nice variety of Dutch poems with plenty of love verses & sonnets, but also eulogies, religious hymns, ones with nature themes, & ones inspired by folktales. The date range of poets also gives a nice variety, from 13th C. to 17th C.

•The Norwegian poems are 18th C. to 20th C., including some by Ibsen. Those also contain love, nature, & religious themes. There are some really beautiful ones, especially by Bjørnson.

•The poems by Morris are well written for the most part, but not my style. These are more traditional, with rhyme schemes & meter. The ones with a narrative (like “Ballad”) I enjoyed the stories of.


[What I didn’t like as much:]

•I’m not sure why the poems were arranged in the order they were. It would make sense to put them in chronological order, by poet, or perhaps grouped by theme. The sequence just felt random.

•The title is “Dutch Poetry”, but also includes a few Norwegian poems in translation, as well as some of the translator’s own work. It would make more sense to publish them separately (especially to put Morris’ poetry in a separate volume).

•For the translations, sometimes the attempts to keep a rhyme scheme result in awkward word choices. This is a translation choice, of course, whether to stick closely to a literal translation or to take liberties in order to rhyme the lines (and not all the poems have this awkwardness). It would have been nice to have a side-by-side view of the originals & the translations, to compare.

•I did not enjoy the subject of some of Morris’ poems, specifically the several that seem to mock young women who hit on him once upon a time. There were just a lot of those, & after awhile they started to feel a bit mean.

[I received an ARC ebook copy from NetGalley in exchange for my honest review. Thank you for the book!]

Since there were many different authors, it depended much on the poems whether I liked them or not (I liked them all, but some were better than others). It was nice to read poems of Dutch origin, and, as far as I can tell, it were good translations as well.