Recommended Books

Recommended translation anthologies which are not language-specific:

Selected Translations (New American Translations), by W.D. Snodgrass
Sappho to Valéry: Poems in Translation, by John F. Nims
Collected Translations (Poetry pleiade), by Edwin Morgan


Recommended language-specific translations and learning materials:

Arabic

Recommended Learning Materials and Student Texts
An Anthology of Arabic Poetry, by Wahab Alansari
Poems of Al-Mutanabbî, by A.J. Arberry
An Introduction to Koranic and Classical Arabic: An Elementary Grammar of the Language, by Wheeler Thackston


Chinese

Recommended Learning Materials and Student Texts
Chinese Through Poetry, by Archie Barnes
Du's Handbook of Classical Chinese Grammar, by Archie Barnes
Fifty-Five T'ang Poems: A Text in the Reading and Understanding of T'ang Poetry  by Hugh M Stimson

Recommended Translations
Three Chinese Poets, tr. Vikram Seth
The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry, tr. Burton Watson


French

Recommended Translations
Molière's Misanthrope and Tartuffe, tr. Richard Wilbur
Phaedra, by Racine, tr. Richard Wilbur
Les Fleurs Du Mal by Baudelaire, tr. Roy Campbell
One Hundred and One Poems by Paul Verlaine: A Bilingual Edition, tr. Norman Shapiro


German

Recommended Translations
Selected Poetry of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Penguin Classics), tr. David Luke
Songs of Love and Grief: A Bilingual Anthology in the Verse Forms of the Originals (European Poetry Classics), by Heinrich Heine, tr. Walter Arndt


Hebrew

Recommended Learning Materials and Student Texts
The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself, ed. Stanley Burnshaw and Others
Reader: Modern Hebrew Prose and Poetry, by Ora Band

Recommended Translations
Found in Translation: Modern Hebrew Poets (Bilingual Edition), tr. Robert Friend
The Song of Songs: The World's First Great Love Poem (Modern Library Classics), tr. Chana and Ariel Bloch


Italian

Recommended Translations
Inferno: A New Verse Translation by Michael Palma, tr. Michael Palma
Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950 (English and Italian Edition), tr. Geoffrey Brock
The Complete Poems of Michelangelo, tr. John. F. Nims


Persian

Recommended Learning Materials and Student Texts
A Millennium of Classical Persian Poetry: A Guide to the Reading & Understanding of Persian Poetry from the Tenth to the Twentieth Century, by Wheeler Thackston
An Introduction to Persian, by Wheeler Thackston
Rumi--Past and Present, East and West: The Life, Teachings, and Poetry of Jalal al-Din Rumi, by Franklin Lewis

Recommended Translations
Borrowed Ware: Medieval Persian Epigrams (Poetica), tr. Dick Davis
The Shahnameh: The Persian Book of Kings, tr. Dick Davis
Vis and Ramin, tr. Dick Davis
Rumi: Swallowing the Sun, tr. Franklin Lewis


Russian

Recommended Translations
Selected Poems by Anna Akhmatova, tr. Walter Arndt
Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Oxford World's Classics) by A.S. Pushkin, tr. James Falen
Verses and Versions: Three Centuries of Russian Poetry, tr. Vladimir Nabokov


Spanish

Recommended Translations
Six Masters of the Spanish Sonnet: Francisco de Quevedo, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Antonio Machado, Federico Garcia Lorca, Jorge Luis Borges, Miguel Hernandez, tr. Willis Barnstone
The Poems of St. John of the Cross, tr. John F. Nims