"misses not a beat of the music or a shiver of the imagery"

Reading these poems, flawlessly made — what else to expect from an author of poems revered universally — and justly! — wherever his language is spoken? — and translated by the learned and devoted Jonathan Cohen, who misses not a beat of the music or a shiver of the imagery and its effect, I was surprised. […] The choice of words in English is so precisely accurate, and creates such a perfect scene and music so right, that were the reader unaware of the author or his language, he would not be able to tell the original from the translation. I say this despite Cohen’s modest description of his achievement. […] Mir writes as if from inside the male voice telling the story of how hard it can be to tame sex undulcified, and Cohen follows so closely that he seems to be inside the same mind, and yet when he becomes himself again and no longer the voice of another man’s book, the reader cannot know where either man stands with respect to this view of a reality composed of what we are and would rather not be. We know only that we’ve learned something obviously real, profoundly human, self-contradictory, and hard to either escape or accept, or ever forget.