Art Beck

Art Beck is a poet, essayist, and translator whose work has appeared in books and magazines since the early 1970s. Translations of Rainer Maria Rilke's poems were published in Etudes: A Rilke Recital (Shanti Arts, 2020), which was a finalist for the 2021 Northern California Book Awards. His Opera Omnia Or, a Duet for Sitar and Trombone, versions of the sixth-century CE North African Roman poet Luxorius (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2013) won the 2013 Northern California Book Award for...See more

Art Beck is a poet, essayist, and translator whose work has appeared in books and magazines since the early 1970s. Translations of Rainer Maria Rilke's poems were published in Etudes: A Rilke Recital (Shanti Arts, 2020), which was a finalist for the 2021 Northern California Book Awards. His Opera Omnia Or, a Duet for Sitar and Trombone, versions of the sixth-century CE North African Roman poet Luxorius (Otis Books/Seismicity Editions, 2013) won the 2013 Northern California Book Award for translated poetry. Mea Roma (Shearsman Books, 2018), a 140-poem "meditative sampling" of Martial's epigram was awarded Honorable Mention in the American Literary Translators Association 2018 Cliff Becker Prize. In 2019, his poetic sequence The Insistent Island was published by Magra Books in its annual chapbook series. From 2009 through 2012, Beck was a regular contributor to Rattle, with essays on translating poetry under the rubric "The Impertinent Duet." His articles on the translator's art have appeared in Jacket2, Your Impossible Voice, The Journal of Poetics Research, PN Review, and The Los Angeles Review of Books. He makes his home in San Francisco. See less