Poems from the Inner Life: How to Translate Spirit Voices

Lizzie Doten, a famous 19th century American poet, was best known for being a medium through whom the spirits of popular poets such as Edgar A. Poe could still transmit their verses even dead by using her as a channel. The characteristics of the trances in which she would recite a poem supposedly under the influence of a spirit were mostly oral and improvised. Lizzie Doten wrote two books: Poems from the Inner Life (1863) and Poems of Progress (1871). They are both a compilation of poems created by spirits through her. In this paper we will focus on the former, for it is the best example of Doten's work where we can find those types of poems. It is also a challenging text to translate, for what we must take into account some of the main items that appear in Doten's poetry: intertextuality, the mediumship process, rhythms, and metrics.