My copy of Path Light just arrived in the mail yesterday, but it got too beat-up in the mail from Beijing to take a photo of (and this despite the bubble-wrap envelope!), so I won’t give you a shot of my translation of Xi Chuan’s “Looking at the Mural in the Ruicheng Temple of Eternal Joy” 观芮城永乐宫壁画 on the back cover.
Instead, I’ll post a link to Paul French‘s write-up on his China Rhyming blog.
The new issue of Plume is here, with new poetry by Taiwanese superstar poet Hsia Yü translated by Steve Bradbury and Eduardo Chirinos translated by Gary Racz, as well as new work by Lydia Davis and International Poetry Nights Hong Kong 2011 participant Paul Muldoon.
Click here for my translation of Xi Chuan’s “The Ant’s Plunder” 蚂蚁劫, published in the last issue.
In honor of the upcoming China – India Writers Dialogues, I wanted to point out the journal Almost Island, whose editors Sharmistha Mohanty and Vivek Narayanan have been organizing the Dialogues.
See also the Almost Island publication of Mohanty’s essay on her experiences in China, “Mountains and Rivers“; Xi Chuan only gets the briefest of mentions (Bei Dao 北岛, Ouyang Jianghe 欧阳江河, and Li Tuo 李陀 get fuller discussions), but it’s a grand take on one writer’s considerations of China and its contrasts with India. Also the prose poem “Editorial Sutras,” which offers Mohanty’s impressions of the first Chinese – Indian Writers’ Dialogue, in 2009.
Over at Popupchinese‘s Sinica series, host Jeremy Goldkorn is joined by Paper Republic‘s Eric Abrahamsen and Alice Liu, managing editor of Path Light: New Chinese Writing, as well as Jo Lusby, general manager of Penguin books in North Asia, for a special podcast on Path Light and the state of contemporary Chinese literature.
Despite the fact that Xi Chuan’s work (in my translation) is joined by that of five other poets–Lei Pingyang 雷平阳, Sun Lei 孙磊, Hou Ma 侯马, Yu Xiang 宇向, and Wong Leung Wo 王良和–the discussion says not a word about Chinese poetry. Still, it’s a worthwhile and informative podcast nonetheless.
Perhaps this should have accompanied my suite of three German posts, but here’s a description (in English, or in German) of a recent and ongoing project of Xi Chuan’s:
It appears that religious buildings in Peking, Buddhist and Taoist temples, churches and mosques haven’t been affected by the modernisation of the city. Their traditional architecture has been preserved, new buildings are not being built, and old buildings are having their traditional architecture restored. The environment around them, however, is changing at a rapid pace. They are now surrounded by chic shopping districts and modern high-rises with glass facades. The Peking writer Xi Chuan is taking a close look at the situation of religious buildings in an era of high-speed urbanism.
Rare are reviews of literary journals, but over at Lantern Review‘s “Panax Ginseng” Henry W. Leung has a write-up of Cha‘s “China issue”–where five of my translations from Xi Chuan’s “Thirty Historical Reflections” 鉴史三十章 appeared–in which he looks at poetic representations of China in English and in Chinese as translated into English. I don’t know if he didn’t read the Xi Chuan or just has nothing to say about his work, but I was impressed by the opening:
“The China Issue” of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal presents itself with an ambiguous title. It is the journal’s literary issue on China, but it might just as well be ‘the issue of China,’ i.e. the problem of it, a claim to authority and singularity; or simply ‘the issue of representing China,’ the question of it, the difficulty. ‘China’ as a thematic boundary is naturally complex for a journal based in Hong Kong—but virtually, over the internet—and presented in English. Most of this issue’s poems are translations from the Chinese, with the originals preserved; of these, few refer explicitly to or narrow themselves by locality… Some of the poems written in English, however, announce their ‘Chineseness’ with archetypal localities, such as romanticized pastorals of farmland China, or romance recalled as manufacture…
Path Light, the new English-language journal produced by Paper Republic and People’s Literature 人民文学, is beginning to have a web presence. Sign up here for information & notification on news and new issues. And as an added bonus, here’s the table of contents of the first issue, including four Xi Chuan pieces in my translation:
Feature: 8th Mao Dun Literature Prize
Zhang Wei You Are on the Highland Liu Xinglong Holy Heaven’s Gate Liu Zhenyun A Word is Worth Ten Thousand Words Fiction / Non-Fiction
Jiang Yitan ‘China Story’ Di An ‘Williams’ Tomb’ Qi Ge ‘The Sugar Blower’ Xiang Zuotie ‘A Rare Steed for the Martial Emperor’ and ‘Raising Whales’ Li Juan ‘The Winter of 2009’ and ‘The Road to Weeping Spring’ Poetry
Lei Pingyang Prayer-Poem on Mt. Jinuo, White Herons, Keeping a Cat, Going Home for a Funeral, The Myna Bird Asks a Question, Collectivist Insect Calls, and Abandoned City Hou Ma Bloodsucking Rapture, Subway, Li Hong’s Kiss and A Wolf? In Sheep’s Clothing? Sun Lei Travel Yu Xiang Sunlight Shines Where It’s Needed, My House, They, A Gust of Wind, Low Key, It Goes Without Saying, Holy Front and Street Wong Leung Wo At Midnight, I See Your Shoes in the Bathroom, Father, This is the Last Day, The Story of Santa and I Thought We Wouldn’t Meet Again Xi Chuan The Body and History, Ill Fortune H 00325, Looking at the Mural in the Ruicheng Temple of Eternal Joy and Dragon Editor’s Pick
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I’ve added a new link to the Bibliography for Xi Chuan list to the right: Chinese Writers on Writing, edited by Arthur Sze, which was published last year as part of a series of on Writing titles published by Trinity University Press. My translation of the Xi Chuan essay is titled “Chinese as a Language in a Neighborhood.” Here’s the quick review by Greta Aart of Cerise Press:
It is difficult, if not impossible, to grasp a progressive development of modern Chinese literature since the wake of the 20th century, when the Chinese language became vernacular. That said, this anthology presents an intelligent, personal selection of landmark essays, novel excerpts, poems, manifestos and conversations (many of which are newly commissioned translations) by 41 writers from China, Taiwan and Hong Kong. A seminal work that helps increase a critical understanding of Chinese writing and literary aesthetics free from official ideology, Chinese Writers on Writing invigorates dialogue about the differences and universality of Chinese language — and its consciousness — in reference to our global framework today.
I have referred a couple of times (here and here) to Xi Chuan’s poetics of the oxymoron, and how it’s related to current Chinese realities, so I thought I would link to an essay where he begins verbalizing such formulations. Xi Chuan wrote “In the Shadow of the Oxymoron” in English for the University of Iowa’s International Writing Program for the Home / Land Symposium on the island of Paros, Greece, in May 2008. Here’s an excerpt:
Some thirty years ago, people in China said “left is right and right is wrong.” Now, to live in the shadow of oxymoron means therefore to live with embarrassment; it means to enjoy a happiness that is absurd.
But to speak in oxymorons means that you are a person who is not going to be understood. I am not using a term like “contradiction” because contradictions are yet to be blended, whereas the social oxymoron is now a reality. Yes I do know concepts such as freedom, justice, love, privacy, equality, democracy, literacy, elite, etc.—but these quasi-saturated concepts are stronger and more popular. The reason why things are going like this is probably the result of an overdone revolution meeting a half-done modernization.
Updates to Kurt Devrese‘s Alligatorzine are now online, featuring cut-ups by Jen Hofer, Henri Michaux translated by Bernard Bador & Clayton Eshleman, prose poems by John Olson, and new Jerome Rothenberg poems in English, French, and Dutch.
Also take a look at Alligator‘s earlier publication of my Xi Chuan translations, “A Personal Paradise” 个人的天堂, “Friends” 熟人, “Companion” 伴侣, “Drizzle” 连阴雨, and “Answering Venus (45 Fragments)” 回答启明星(45断章).