William O’Daly

William O’Daly (Poetry, Translation) | Los Angeles, CA

Booking Fee:

Negotiable

Will Travel:

Anywhere

Contact:

williamodalyat_sign_13x20gmail.com

Website:

http://williamodaly.com

William O’Daly is a poet, translator, essayist, and fiction writer. His published works include eight books of the late and posthumous poetry of Chilean Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda (Still Another Day, The Separate Rose, Winter Garden, The Sea and the Bells, The Yellow Heart, The Book of Questions, The Hands of Day, and World’s End), all published with Copper Canyon Press. He has two chapbooks of his own poetry: The Whale in the Web (Copper Canyon Press) and the recently released The Road to Isla Negra (Folded Word Press). O’Daly was a finalist for the 2006 Quill Award in Poetry and was profiled by Mike Leonard for NBC’s The Today Show. His poems, translations, essays, and reviews have been published in a wide range of anthologies and magazines: American Poetry Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Clover, CutBank, Field, Great River Review, Miju Poetry & Poetics (Mijusihak; interview and poem with accompanying Korean translation), Missouri Review, Narrative, Northwest Review, Parabola, Poetry East, Portland Review, RATTLE, Tiferet, Virginia Quarterly Review, and many others. A National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, he has worked as a literary and technical editor, a college professor, and an instructional designer, winning regional and national awards for literary editing and instructional design. With co-author Han-ping Chin, he recently completed a historical novel, This Earthly Life, based on the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This Earthly Life was selected for the “Finalist” category in prestigious Narrative magazine’s 2009 Fall Story Contest.

Books (Translations)

World's End (Copper Canyon, 2015)
World’s End (Copper Canyon, 2015) – Pablo Neruda, Translated by William O’Daly
The Hands of Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), Pablo Neruda, Translated by William O'Daly
The Hands of Day (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), Pablo Neruda, Translated by William O’Daly
Still Another Day (Copper Canyon Press, 1984/2005). Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O'Daly
Still Another Day (Copper Canyon Press, 1984/2005). Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O’Daly

The Separate Rose (Copper Canyon Press, 1985/2005). Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O'Daly.
The Separate Rose (Copper Canyon Press, 1985/2005). Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O’Daly.
Winter Garden (Copper Canyon Press, 1986/2002). Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O'Daly.
Winter Garden (Copper Canyon Press, 1986/2002). Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O’Daly.
The Sea and the Bells (Copper Canyon Press, 1988/2002). Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O'Daly.
The Sea and the Bells (Copper Canyon Press, 1988/2002). Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O’Daly.

The Yellow Heart (Copper Canyon Press, 1990/2002). Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O'Daly.
The Yellow Heart (Copper Canyon Press, 1990/2002). Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O’Daly.
The Book of Questions (Copper Canyon Press, 2001) Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O'Daly.
The Book of Questions (Copper Canyon Press, 1991/2001) Pablo Neruda. Translated by William O’Daly.

Chapbooks

The Road to Isla Negra (Folded Word Press, 2015)
The Road to Isla Negra (Folded Word Press, 2015)
The Whale in the Web (Copper Canyon Press, 1979)

Press & Reviews

“O’Daly has spent more than 20 years translating Neruda’s late work, and here he brings his awe-inspiring [eight]-volume Copper Canyon project to a conclusion with taut, spare renderings that capture what, in the end, is the hopeful pith of Neruda’s troubled old-age rumination: “The world was finishing us / and we went on losing / winning more each day.” Neruda turned the whole dramatic odyssey of his life into a poem in progress, and O’Daly’s work reminds us how astonished and grateful we should continue to be.”
Los Angeles Times, Sunday Book Review

“Pablo Neruda’s World’s End has finally been translated into English 40 years after its initial publication in Spanish. Translator William O’Daly does a wonderful job of keeping the language palpable and rhythmic. Written five years before the end of Neruda’s life, this eerily relevant book is also a wonderful introduction to Neruda because of its balance of image and representative message.”
— Matt Soucy, Coldfront

“William O’Daly has been a patient and dedicated poet-translator for forty years. In these poems paying homage to Pablo Neruda, sweetness meets strength as his tender and muscular music leads us on. I welcome these poems with unfettered enthusiasm and gratitude.”
— Sam Hamill, author of Habitation: Collected Poems (Lost Horse Press, 2014) and Founding Editor of Copper Canyon Press

“William O’Daly, master translator of Neruda’s later work, joins Don Pablo here on The Road to Isla Negra, with dazzling songs of friendship, sadness, and the sea. Neruda Presente!”
— Dennis Maloney, author of Listening to Tao Yuan Ming (Glass Lyre Press, 2015)

“Part homage, part elegy, part visitation, William O’Daly’s The Road to Isla Negra brings Neruda into our lives — fresh, transparent, and searching for the Chile he left and loved and returned to over and over, until finally, it becomes a song, a chant that O’Daly sings until we hear him, again, on the first morning on that beach with Matilde. Galen Garwood’s accompanying photographs make me think of the beautiful book honoring Robinson Jeffers, Jeffers Country — photographs with Jeffers’ poems. This is as close as you will get to finding Neruda on the page — now that Neruda has surrendered his poems to Chile, and to his many readers beyond its borders. O’Daly has devoted a lifetime to Neruda, as translator, as champion, and now, as the fine poet he is.”
— Shaun T. Griffin, author of Woodsmoke, Wind, and the Peregrine (University of Nevada Press, 2008)


Additional Commentary

 

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