Translations of Mark Tardi’s Recapitulation in the Wrong Key

There are moments in a book’s life when it opens outward, when its language begins to travel, to echo, to find new breath in other mouths. That is exactly what is happening with Recapitulation in the Wrong Key by Mark Tardi.

This week brings wonderful news: selections from the book have been translated into not one but two languages, appearing in respected European literary journals. One book. Three languages. All poetry.

In Italy, the distinguished journal Argo has published a selection translated into Italian by Rosella Renzi, with the assistance of Gianluca Rizzo. Argo has long been a vibrant platform for contemporary international writing, and this placement situates Tardi’s work within a dynamic, cross-cultural literary conversation. The poems, already alive with tonal shifts and polyphonic tension, take on new musicality in Italian, proving that even when written “in the wrong key,” poetry can find the right resonance abroad.

Meanwhile, Polish readers encountered a different excerpt in Wizje, translated by Joanna Piechura. For a poet deeply engaged with Poland, Tardi is also the author of Viscera: Eight Voices from Poland, this translation feels especially meaningful. The linguistic exchange moves in both directions: a writer shaped by Polish literature now returning to that readership in Polish translation. It is a full-circle moment that underscores how porous and reciprocal literary borders can be.

These publications add another layer to what has already been an extraordinary trajectory for Tardi. A 2022 NEA Fellow and 2023 PEN/Heim Translation Fund recipient, he has built a career at the intersection of poetry and translation, authorship and collaboration. Recapitulation in the Wrong Key embodies that spirit, its very title suggesting variation, revision, and the productive friction of dissonance. Now, through translation, the book enacts its own thesis: language shifts, refracts, and re-sounds in new tonal registers.

For readers who follow contemporary poetry’s international currents, this is exciting news. It reminds us that a book does not remain fixed on its publication date. It continues to unfold, across journals, across borders, across tongues.

One book. Three languages, and counting.

Read more of Mark Tardi’s Recapitulation in the Wrong Key here.