Li Shangyin & Chloe Garcia Roberts in the Harvard Gazette

Chloe Garcia Roberts605The Harvard Gazette has a feature on Chloe Garcia Roberts and her translation of Derangements of My Contemporaries 義山雜纂 by Li Shangyin 李商隱, forthcoming from New Directions.

For a poet writing in late Tang-era China, Li Shangyin sure was cheeky.

“The list-poems document one person’s reactions to and interactions with the mundane aspects of his life, and there isn’t anyone alive who can’t relate to that,” said Garcia Roberts.

She calls the list-poems funny and bitter.

“They read like a notebook that you keep in your pocket to write down things that irritate you. One of the poems I really love I’ve translated as ‘Scenery Killers,’ but the basic idea is chronicling things that spoil your enjoyment of your surroundings.”

For the full article, click the image above.