Shi on Goodman’s Wang Xiaoni

Posted on September 30, 2015 by Lucas Klein

At Cha Huiwen Shi reviews Eleanor Goodman’s translation of Something Crosses My Mind 有什么在我心里一过 by Wang Xiaoni 王小妮.

The collection provides both the Chinese and English versions of the works, allowing the reader to compare Goodman’s translations with the originals. Her translation doesn’t always provide a literal rendition of the Chinese, but it has full awareness of Wang’s poetic nuance, carries through the works’ humour and sentiments and keeps the essentials of the music. For example, there is the line “夜空背後黑汪汪的深,” which Goodman translates as “the boundless black depths behind the night sky.” Unable to reproduce the sound of the doubling “汪汪” (“wangwang”) in Chinese, Goodman cleverly uses the alliterative “boundless black” as an attempt to recreate the effect … There are many similar moments to these when the translation yields alternative imagery and themes that complicate any singular understanding of the original.

Click the image above for more.

Lucien Stryk Award Shortlist

Posted on September 16, 2015 by Lucas Klein

ALTA has posted the shortlist for this year’s Lucien Stryk Award, which honors book-length translations into English of poetry or Zen Buddhist texts from Hindi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Thai, Vietnamese, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean into English.

The shortlisted titles are:

Cat Town by Sakutarō Hagiwara 萩原朔太郎, translated from the Japanese by Hiroaki Sato (New York Review Books)
Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader, translated from the Sanskrit by Mani Rao (Aleph Book Company)
Salsa by Hsia Yu 夏宇, translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury (Zephyr Press)
Something Crosses My Mind by Wang Xiaoni 王小妮, translated from the Chinese by Eleanor Goodman (Zephyr Press)
Sorrowtoothpaste Mirrorcream by Kim Hyesoon, translated from the Korean by Don Mee Choi (Action Books)

This year’s judges were Janet Poole, Stephen Snyder, and Lucas Klein.

Goodman’s Wang Xiaoni on the Griffin Shortlist

Posted on April 13, 2015 by Lucas Klein

The shortlist for the International Griffin Poetry Prize–one of the most prestigious contemporary poetry prizes–has been announced, with Eleanor Goodman’s translation of Something Crosses My Mind 有什么在我心里一过 by Wang Xiaoni 王小妮, getting top billing.

The judges are Tim Bowling (Canada), Fanny Howe (USA) and Piotr Sommer (Poland). Their citation reads:

“What is so attractive about Wang Xiaoni’s poems as translated into English by Eleanor Goodman is her quiet, loving, meditative distance to the mostly anonymous and lonely heroes she clearly knows well. And her attitude to time, which she keeps dragging out of its anchored localities (and barely marked history) to extend and connect, or fuse with specific spaces that she also enlarges in size and scope. Moments prolong into a century or a life, imaginary beasts meld with real animals, description becomes an act of meditation. In a few lines, a village can take on the dimension of a vast landscape – and yet still remain that particular village. And while Xiaoni’s [sic] characters may not speak, they seem to have a real insight into our experience and lives. In a way nothing much happens in her magic lyricism: the wind blows, the ocean rises, people work or move from one place to another, or wait, or just leave some place, and they have souls (which behave like shadows); someone on a journey sees them, through the window, between one landscape and another, and it’s difficult to know why all this is so moving. Reading her, I found myself repeating Auden’s phrase “About suffering they were never wrong, / The old Masters.” Wang Xiaoni is a terrific contemporary poet gracefully extending the great classical Chinese tradition.”

Click the image above for the full list.

SCMP Reviews Something Crosses My Mind

Posted on September 30, 2014 by Lucas Klein

Amy Russell at the South China Morning Post has reviewed Something Crosses My Mind 有什么在我心里一过, Eleanor Goodman’s translation of poems by Wang Xiaoni 王小妮. Here’s an excerpt:

The interaction between Wang’s characters and their environment is a crucial aspect of her work, vividly epitomised in Plowman, where “red … comes after punishment” and “after pain has been quietly survived”.

Wang’s gentle but weighty words are built from sharp observation, and deliver an honesty and rawness brilliantly captured in the translation by Harvard research associate Eleanor Goodman. As a northerner writing in the south, Wang has an outsider’s perspective, noticing details that locals might overlook.

Click on the image for the full review.

Asian Review of Books on Goodman’s Wang Xiaoni

Posted on August 28, 2014 by Lucas Klein

The Asian Review of Books has published Jennifer Wong’s review of Something Crosses My Mind 有什么在我心里一过 by Wang Xiaoni 王小妮, translated by Eleanor Goodman. Here’s an excerpt:

Goodman’s strength as a translator lies in her ability to render the Chinese poetic language faithfully and with elegance, adhering to syntax and line breaks, while taking care that the translated verse does not alienate the reader. She has kept true to Wang’s immediate, unaffected voice, and maintained her uncanny, pithy word choice. She also refrains from the temptation to over-translate or gloss over the strangeness of poetic language. A fuller annotation of terms might however benefit those readers unfamiliar with Chinese rituals, regional life and dialects. The decision to make this book a bilingual edition makes it possible for sinologists and those who are able to access both languages to compare and understand how Chinese and English poetic language and form operate.

Click on the image above for the full review.

Eleanor Goodman’s Wang Xiaoni on Asymptote

Posted on July 24, 2014 by Lucas Klein

Asymptote has published a suite of Wang Xiaoni 王小妮 poems translated by Eleanor Goodman, from the forthcoming Zephyr / Chinese University Press book Something Crosses My Mind. Here’s a taste:

Moonlight, No. 1

The moon unexpectedly casts its light.
A warm ocean island’s metal shell glints
and the earth shows its hidden treasures.

This armor that practices falling onto shoulders
gives off only a cold light, and no sound.
In silver fragments that float farther and farther
tonight I should at least find something to do.

Ferocity takes its chance to hide even deeper
an outstretched hand reaches the light
so soft that no matter the angle it never looks like a dagger.

5.2006, Shenzhen

Click on the image above for the full suite.

Moonlight, No. 1The moon unexpectedly casts its light.
A warm ocean island’s metal shell glints
and the earth shows its hidden treasures.

This armor that practices falling onto shoulders
gives off only a cold light, and no sound.
In silver fragments that float farther and farther
tonight I should at least find something to do.

Ferocity takes its chance to hide even deeper
an outstretched hand reaches the light
so soft that no matter the angle it never looks like a dagger.

5.2006, Shenzhen – See more at: http://www.asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Poetry&id=187#sthash.2efCWm1F.dpuf