h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

frederick seidel, a poet well known to readers of the new york review of books and the london review of books, has struggled in an interesting way with this poem. after -- according to his own account -- twenty-odd years, he produced not -- as he had originally intended -- a translation, but a tribute. in earlier traditions of translation, this might be called an imitation. anyway, seidel sees the poem as a swagger rather than -- as its earlier translators from victorian england had it -- a cry of melancholy. see http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/detail/50922