ABSTRACT
The 'exquisite' S14 suburban train from Zurich, as the Swiss writer C.-A. Cingria (1883-1954) might have said, glides like a dream through shiny metallic industrial areas and then bypasses woody hills east of Lake Zurich, making several stops before reaching the terminus, Hinwil. The Looren Ubersetzerhaus is a large, ecologically designed farmhouse, the former owners, the publisher Albert Zust and his family, pioneered organic farming in Switzerland over fifty years ago, that has now been refurbished as an international work and meeting place for translators. A translator can stop at the edge of such a wood, gaze at the larch, and try to open himself up to inner experiences that parallel those that he has found described so memorably by a foreign poet. Along with Pierre Chappuis (b. 1930), Pierre-Alain Tache (1940), and Frederic Wandelere (b. 1949), Voelin is featured in the anthology Quatre poetes, which offers generous selections from the work of these four poets who deserve attention abroad.
