There’s no gainsaying that you have more pressing concerns than to read a process-driven and autobiographical account celebrating a new translation of select verse by Goethe. Indeed, we all do. Scanning the headlines as we scroll through our social media feeds, we are collectively undone by illimitable crises: There’s the pandemic, of course; catastrophic climate change; drought and famine; a global rise in fascism; the Holocene extinction; cyberwarfare; the acidification of the oceans; a worldwide recession—and the list goes on and on and on (and on). So, during this annus horribilis, marshaling whatever intellectual energy that remains to read, God help us, poetry seems, well, unseemly: After all, turning inward from the apocalyptic to seek, ostrich-like, the sanctuary of belles lettres suggests either brazen decadence or outright escapism. And, while we’re playing the devil’s advocate here, we might as well ask what possible value could a new translation of centuries-old verse by a dead white European male have for us now?