Technical Description
Not only is "Lost in Translation" a poem about a child putting together a jigsaw puzzle, it is an interpretive puzzle, designed to engage a reader's interest in solving mysteries at various narrative levels.
The poem is dedicated to Merrill's friend, the distinguished poet, critic, and translator Richard Howard. It consists of 215 lines with an additional four line epigraph. The poem is mainly in unrhymed pentameter but includes a section in Rubaiyat quatrain stanzas. "Lost in Translation" may be classified as an autobiographical narrative or narrative poem, but is better understood as a series of embedded narratives (stories within a story).
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