Homophonic translations create poems that foreground the sound of the
original more than the lexical meaning: sound-alike poems or "sound
writing." This essay presents a dizzying number of examples of sound
mimesis as a way to explore the poetics of sound and the politics of
translation. Covering modernists (such as Pound, Bunting, and
Khelbnikov) and contemporaries (such as David Melnick and Caroline
Bergvall), the Bernstein also addresses homophonics in popular culture
including an extended discussion of TV comedian Sid Caear's "double
talking." The essay raises a thorny question: Are homophonic poems a
form of cultural appropriation or a form of transnationalism?