ABSTRACT
Katharine Washburn, editor of the definitive World Poetry anthology (W. W. Norton, 1998) included eight of my translations and wrote to me in February 2000: “No one has ever translated Goethe as well as you into English.” Her words emboldened me to apply the preceding “Transplanter’s Credo” (see pages 3–4) to Goethe, sometimes making exceptions to the credo when exceptions worked.
