Abstract
This essay examines the cultural dynamics that were established at the outset of the Cold War,especially from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, that dictated the translation and production of poetry on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In 1959 the Czech poet Jan Zábrana (1931-1984) translated and edited an anthology of radical American poets, and by exploring the contexts of his editorial decisions we uncover the above mentioned dynamics, also precipitating revaluations of American canon formation in this period.
Zábrana's difficulties and victories as a translator during the Cold War deeply influenced his own poetry, and I end with a consideration of two of his sonnets, by viewing them in a transnational context between anglophone and Russian poetry, arguing that their aesthetic achievement can only be fully appreciated by reference to the political context of the Cold War.