Xi Chuan at Almost Island

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In their new issue, south-Asian journal Almost Island has published a transcription Xi Chuan gave with Vivek Almost IslandNarayanan in New Delhi in December, 2013 (along with some excerpts read from Notes on the Mosquito), titled “Doubting Yourself and the World at Once.” Here’s a passage:

I think, to be creative you need to at least be symmetrical to the surroundings. You may get your language from others, from previous writers, but maybe there is another possibility–that is, you can get your language from reality itself, from society itself. And I wrote an essay some years ago in which I talked about the Chinese oxymorons, social oxymorons. So, before, when I wanted to be a new poet, I tried to be a surrealist, or a symbolist, or a futurist, and now I don’t care about all these terms, and I feel that I need to be honest to myself, and I need to be honest to my awkwardness in this society, my embarrassment in this society. And once you admit that you are embarrassed, then maybe, maybe you can go on with your writing.

Click the image above for the full article, which can also be downloaded as a .pdf file.

Asymptote Nominates Hai Zi for Pushcart

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Asymptote has put forward translations of Hai Zi 海子 by Ye Chun for consideration for the 2014 Puschart Prize.

in the wheat field of May      dreaming of my brothers
I see cobblestones roll over the riverbank
The arc sky at dusk
fills the earth with sad villages
Sometimes I sit in the wheat field reciting Chinese poetry
My eyes disappear, my lips disappear
有时我孤独一人坐下
在五月的麦地　梦想众兄弟
看到家乡的卵石滚满了河滩
黄昏常存弧形的天空
让大地上布满哀伤的村庄
有时我孤独一人坐在麦地里为众兄弟背诵中国诗歌
没 有了眼睛也没有了嘴唇
Click on the image above for the full issue

Wang Ping Reviewed in Rain Taxi

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tenthousandwavesAndreas Weiland in Rain Taxi reviews Wang Ping’s Ten Thousand Waves (Wings Press). Here’s an excerpt:

The last lines of the poem tell us that she realizes the consequences of her formality when she is back in the States, looking at the “trophy” acquired for nine yuan during her visit to the motherland. She understands suddenly how she has internalized way too much of the new culture she has immersed herself in, after leaving China many years ago.

I put away my victory in a trunk,
never give it a second thought
until I’m pulled out of the line
at Minneapolis custom, maggot fingers
prodding socks, underwear, wrapped gifts,
and there it is—my bargain
red and loud like thunderclaps:
“You saved a dime, fool,
but lost your soul.”

The presence of the voices of the Others—Chinese persons who have not left China, but some of whom dream of going to America—complicates the poems, turning what might be mere narrative into a dialogue, an exchange of standpoints, worldviews, sometimes a collision. In modern poetry, particularly in China between 1919 and 1949, this was a preferred poetic device that would render a social contrast more visible to readers. Wang Ping has used this device sensitively while transposing the modernist literary heritage of China’s great epic poets into a contemporary American English diction.

Click on the image for the full review.

The Umbrellas and the Tear Gas

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CURAmag has posted “The Umbrellas and the Tear Gas,” a feature of poems from the Occupy Central movement, now cleared, put together and introduced by Louise Law, with Henry Wei Leung. The poems are by Chung Kwok Keung, translated by Tammy Ho, and Chan Lai Kuen, translated by Amy K. Bell. “The two poems selected here are a reminder of the first days,” Law and Leung write. “They are also an artifact, a document of local voices speaking for themselves in the face of being revised by an official history.”

Metaphor is on strike
and there’s pepper spray to eat,
…hard to say how many peppers were used.
Tear gas tastes just like tear gas.

Click on the image for the poems.

Red Pine / Bill Porter Reviewed in Rain Taxi

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Justin Wadland reviews The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse, translated by Red Pine (Copper mountainpoemsCanyon) and Yellow River Odyssey by Bill Porter (Chin Music) for Rain Taxi (author Bill Porter’s nom de guerre as translator is Red Pine). The review begins:

The translator known as Red Pine thinks of translating in terms of dancing. “I see the poet dancing, but dancing to music I can’t hear. Still, I’m sufficiently enthralled by the beauty of the dance that I want to join the poet. And as I do,” he writes. “I try to get close enough to feel the poet’s rhythm, not only the rhythm of the words but also the rhythm of the poet’s heart.” Over a career spanning three decades, yellowriverodysseyRed Pine has danced with many classical Chinese poets and important works of Taoist and Buddhist literature…. Informed by his own Buddhist practice and travels in Asia, Red Pine’s work is consistently characterized by a generosity of spirit that opens up these challenging texts to the English-speaking world.

Click either of the images for the full review.

LA Review Reviews Ye Mimi

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daysgobyTim Lantz reviews His Days Go By the Way Her Years by Ye Mimi 葉覓覓, as translated by Steve Bradbury (Anomalous Press, 2013) at the LA Review:

The chapbook was short-listed for the 2014 Best Translated Book Award, and for good reason. Steve Bradbury does a spectacular job Englishing Ye’s rousing syntax and rhythm—for example, from “The More Car the More Far”:

One day they drag a railroad track over for her, teach her how to belch black smoke from her fontanelles.

So then she cars up. Facing the track, facing the eaves.

I am precise. I am naughty. I am gravity.

For those who can read Chinese and English, part of the fun of the book is going back and forth between the languages to see how the poems work in both and how one has become the other (and thus an argument for including the original language in other translated works). In both languages, His Days Go By the Way Her Years is a beautifully weird book.

Click on the image for the full review.

LA Review Reviews Lan Lan

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CanyonintheBodyJohn Zeiser writing for the LA Review has his take on Canyon in the Body, by Lan Lan 蓝蓝 as translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, from the Jintian series published by Zephyr and Chinese University Presses. He writes:

her early success was followed by years of poor health which prevented her from attending university. Although she never lost sight of poetry as her calling, she had to take work where she could find it. She was a crane operator, a packer in a factory, and eventually as a technical writer. These experiences on the bottom rungs of a country plowing forward crop up again and again. Small villages full of laborers and peasants she encountered daily populate her poems. In “Please Discuss Happiness with Me”, she writes, “an old shepherd smacks his lips loudly / on a wine cup” while in “Siesta”:

Noon. The village slumps into
…………a bright late night.

A draft brushes the spine of a napping man
a mother lies on a kang mat nursing her child
her fragrant body aligning with the earth.

I will make one correction, though: Zeiser says “For many, the Jintian collections represent their first in English.” In fact, this is the first collection in English for every poet published in the series.

Click the image for the full review.