John Rufo on Hsia Yü’s Salsa

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salsa_wJohn Rufo has posted a review of Steve Bradbury’s new translation of Salsa by Hsia Yü 夏宇 (Zephyr Press). It starts:

Jorge Luis Borges has been reincarnated as a radical poet from Taipei, and Salsa invites you to her personal hell. In Hsia Yü’s most recently translated book of poems, we come face-to-face with an inferno of identity crises.

And ends:

Translators typically present Borges’s most famous prose-poem “Borges y Yo” in English as “Borges and I.” If Hsia Yü wrote a version of this poem, the title might be “Hsia Yü and I.” This sounds altogether more intimate than “Borges and I” because of the homophone, in English, of “you.” At the same time, the duality of “Yü,” both as the poet’s name, who is not you, and as “you,” who might be you, reveals the frightening fracture of identity Salsa endlessly probes. “But,” as a line of Hsia Yü’s poem “And You’ll Never Want to Travel There Again” rightly notes, “I do leave a memorable fracture.”

Click on the image above for the full review.

TK Lee on Chen Li: Toward a Material Poetics in Chinese

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MCLC logoCheck out, if you can, a new article on Taiwanese poet Chen Li 陳黎, from the new issue of Modern Chinese Literature & Culture, by Tong King Lee 李忠慶: “Toward a Material Poetics in Chinese: Text, Translation, and Technology in the Works of Chen Li.” From the abstract:

How do text, translation, and technology intersect and interact in contemporary Chinese poetics? This essay attempts an answer to this question through a case study of the Taiwanese poet Chen Li (b.1954) … The essay examines how translation and technology collaborate to produce a visceral poetics that demands not just the capacity to interpret for meaning, but also sensory attention to the physical word and somatic participation in the generation of literary experience. In so doing, it highlights the dialectic between verbal and non-verbal modes as well as between digital and non-digital technologies in contemporary Chinese literature.

Click on the image for the full abstract & citation information.

The Aurora Borealis Prize

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People’s Daily reports:

On the afternoon of August 2nd, during the member’s assembly of the 20th World Conference of the Federation of International Translators (FIT), FIT conferred The “Aurora Borealis” Prize on Xu Yuanchong, a Chinese translator. This international award is hosted every three years. Xu is the first Chinese winner of the award.

As this blog often hosts links to goings-on in Chinese poetry (from any era) as translated into or reported in English, I try to keep things civil–there is a lot of Chinese poetry, and a lot of different tastes, and not much translation, so I want to accommodate and encourage as much breadth as possible. Translation is an expression not of oneself but of another, and I don’t feel the need to parade my opinions on this format. If I don’t want to repeat something, I’ll pass over it in silence, as they say–and maybe you can’t tell whether I’m relegating it to oblivion out of spite or if I just missed it.

But sometimes I can’t resist letting my opinions be known. The People’s Daily article quoted above, about the Aurora Borealis award going to Xu Yuanchong 许渊冲 (sometimes written as Xu Yuanzhong, I think because he likes his initials being X. Y. Z.), is unclear about whether the prize is from FIT or the Norwegian Association of Literary Translators, so my opinions will have to remain untargeted. At any event, they praise him for “facilitating communication between Chinese, English and French,” and though I can’t say anything about his translations into Chinese, I will say that I draw a different conclusion from the article’s note about “how painstakingly Xu applies himself to Shakespeare’s texts” when I read of his “plan to finish the complete works of Shakespeare in five years.”

More importantly, though, I will say this as clearly as I can: Xu Yuanchong is the absolute worst translator of Chinese poetry into English I have ever read.

Nor am I the only one to think so. I defy any reader of English poetry to get through a translation of Xu’s without an eye roll. As Brian Holton has written in “When the Blind Lead the Blind” :

The egregious Xu Yuanzhong, … though he has the impudence to style himself ‘the greatest living Chinese-English translator’ (personal communication 2000), he is the worst possible role model and a pernicious influence on younger scholars and students in China, who are not aware that seniority and self-advertisement do not confer literary skill in English.

I recommend reading Holton’s short piece. I do not recommend reading any of Xu’s translations into English. And I have no idea what the FIT or the Norwegian Association of Literary Translators could have possibly been thinking in giving this guy such an award.

Asia Society Hongkong Launch of Ouyang Jianghe’s Phoenix

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August 8: Evening Poetry Reading and Discussion

Drinks Reception at 6:30 pm
Reading & Discussion at 7:00 pm
Close at 8:00 pm
Asia Society Hongkong

Ouyang Jianghe 欧阳江河 will read from his ekphrastic mini-epic Phoenix 凤凰, with poet Nicolas Wong reading Austin Woerner’s English translation. A discussion on the relationship between Ouyang’s writing and its inspiration in the sculpture by Xu Bing 徐冰 will follow.

From Woerner’s preface to the translation:

The poem multiplies the complexity of his earlier poems; it is, by his own account, his magnum opus. Synthesizing his earlier concerns of the materiality of language, the Chinese literary legacy, and the role of art in society into a sustained meditation on the theme of flight, it reflects two and a half decades of work refining the “obscure” language of Misty poetry into a vessel for sophisticated philosophical inquiry. The poem, written by Ouyang in 2010 after a silence of almost two decades, is the culmination of his experiment, where in the eighties and nineties he produced a body of poems distinguished by their length, technical intricacy, and high degree of abstraction. He has, in his recent work, taken this project to a new level, writing book-length poems of densely interlinked stanzas rife with wordplay, a fugue-like development of motifs, and the technique of argument by paradox — known in Chinese as beilun (悖論) — employed by the philosopher Zhuangzi (莊子) to capture the illogical logic of Daoism.

Click the image above for further event information and free registration.

Red Pine on Journeys, Poets, & Best-Sellerdom in China

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Bill Porter is a best-selling author who has also translated over a dozen books of poetry and religious texts.The NYTimes Sinosphere blog has an interview with poetry translator Red Pine, a/k/a Bill Porter. Here’s an excerpt:
Q. Besides your travel books, your translations of some classics, such as the Platform Sutra and the Heart Sutra have been published in Chinese. Most Chinese readers probably don’t care about how you translated the book into English, so what’s of interest to them?
A. They’re interested in my commentaries to the text — how I interpret the meaning.
Q. But your commentaries are based on Chinese sources.
A. I think our educational system makes us perhaps more open to different ideas. The Chinese are more constrained by their history of commentaries. Me, I don’t know what the tradition is. I just read the commentaries and use them to understand how the texts relate to practice. [Mr. Porter is a practicing Buddhist.] So it’s a personal journey and they’re interested in that. By the end of the year, my editions of the Dao De Jing and the Diamond Sutra are coming out in Chinese too.
Click the image above for the full interview.

Epsians #4

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Epsians #4 is now out. Here’s the table of contents:

Li Zeng, Cui Dan
The Shaping of Chinese Modern Poetry by English Romantic Poetry: A Case Study of Xiang Zhu’s Poetry / 1

 Liu Chun
“Undo Thin Hearte”: The Treatment of the Ubi Sunt Theme in Medieval Penitential Lyrics / 23

Zhang Pinggong
Literary Work vs. Cultural Assumption: Illustrating Some Caribbean and English Writers and Texts / 35

J.H. Prynne
John Keats, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’：Study Note /49

Wang Zuyou
The English Language Haiku Poet and Mentor: An Interview with Lenard D. Moore / 87

Li Zhimin
Editorial Memoir: A Life Choice /101

Ou Hong
Some Notes on EPSIANS /109

Click the image above for a .pdf of the issue (from Jacket2).

Josh Stenberg’s Sun Dong on Asymptote

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Asymptote has also published poetry by Sun Dong 孙冬 as translated by Josh Stenberg. From “Wall” 墙:

Geographic change is too slow
a species goes extinct too slowly          the years roll on
everything is the opposite of the poetic
the carrot top is a little conspirator          Brodsky also drank gutter oil
that guard Micaiah can only say drily
you can cough when you’re at home

Click the image above for the full set.

Wall

Sun Dong


Geographic change is too slow
a species goes extinct too slowly          the years roll on
everything is the opposite of the poetic
the carrot top is a little conspirator          Brodsky also drank gutter oil
that guard Micaiah can only say drily
you can cough when you’re at home

– See more at: http://www.asymptotejournal.com/article.php?cat=Poetry&id=183&curr_index=8&curPage=Poetry#sthash.7NRYBtOZ.dpuf

Eleanor Goodman’s Wang Xiaoni on Asymptote

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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

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

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

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

Zhou Yaping & J. H. Prynne

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Nowhere-ManXiucai Zheng has published some of the first correspondence between Original 原样 poet Zhou Yaping 周亚平 and J H Prynne of the Cambridge School, excerpted from Original: Chinese Language-Poetry Group, a special edition of Parataxis: Modernism and Modern Writing 7 [1995]. Get a load of this. From Zhou:

It must be pointed out that the language experiments we are pursuing, after much passionate labour, have been welcomed by a fairly large circle. Not by the authorities, on the contrary by the freedom and choice of those friends who are even younger than ourselves. We, the quick and chaotic metamorphosis and the happy principle in the course of metamorphosis, enjoy the abundant trust they grant us. When our solid work and resolution are regarded by some real cheats as a mockery, these friends have never felt hesitation or disappointment simply because they cannot spot in our poetry the elements that critics think poets should imitate. An uncompromising form of art will become increasingly well-developed and exquisite, whose revolutionary thoroughness cannot be attained by politics or anything connected with politics. All will have to go through the hands of poets.

From Prynne:

To prevent the leakage of energy into pre-determined frames of control, several ancient Chinese traditions of wit, scepticism and cantilevered invention have been brought into newly explored relations with western iconography and the art-slogans of selfhood. Not only the ellipsis of lyric epigram but also the exuberance of the fu or rhyme-prose join up with the frequently deflected currents of Chinese poetic experiment in the twentieth century; here, to centralise the contingent via its force for total candour, or ‘to drive out all lyricism’ by rapid cross-talk and studious hooliganism. Or indeed, both at once. All this is likewise also decoy manoeuvre, reclaiming the margins by transferring their negligence back into spirited invention. There is a running stream half-visible alongside, but for those not tuned into these features the interplay of this writing in its English form can still provoke analogous recognitions. ‘The world is small’ opined Confucius, standing on top of Mount Snowdon and chewing a banana. The English text can disclose to the English reader one truly essential feature: this writing moves about its native element with a good deal of unusual compression and exhilaration but it is not exotic. This is the language of a world, not a fancied ping-pong utopia, and its living currency is what makes abstraction and invention into such considered forms of daring

Click on the Nowhere Man for the full link.

van Crevel Reviews Manfredi’s Modern Poetry in China

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200Modern Chinese Literature & Culture has published Maghiel van Crevel’s review of Modern Poetry in China: A Visual-Verbal Dynamic, by Paul Manfredi. Here’s how it begins:

How does one “see” a poem? Is seeing a poem like reading a painting, a friendly metaphor that brings together various perspectives on literature and art? As such, are there any poems that can not be seen, apart from those that commit the unforgivable sin of speaking in abstractions? If not, can the metaphor succeed in capturing a particular set of texts, rather than the genre in its entirety?

Click on the image above for the full review.