Fauns, 'Success,' cruising-spot ghosts and translating as an "erotic act"

‘Success’ and a Faun’s Afternoon. Richard Howard, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet and translator, amuses us while musing on French fauns, ghosts of all-but-forgotten New York cruising spots, and the cultural figures he’s memorialized or channeled in verse – including painter Alice Neel, dancer Isadora Duncan and Madame Charles de Gaulle.  Now in his eighties, this “living legend” shares his poems, tells us about the eroticism of translation, and reflects on gay life before many of you were born.

Eric Jansen hosts this interview, conducted after Mr. Howard's recent reading at the Center for the Art of Translation's "Lit & Lunch" series in San Francisco, with the Center's literary programs manager, C.J. Evans.