Turner’s Lu Xun in Seedings

seedings1-f-coverIssue 1 of the new journal Seedings is now out, featuring a great collection of work by some of English’s best poets: Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Nathaniel Tarn, Rosmarie Waldrop, Will Alexander… and translators: Keith Waldrop (Paul Verlaine), Cole Swensen (Jaime Montestrela), Johannes Göransson (Sara Tuss Efrik)…

Worth mention on this blog are the three new translations by Matt Turner of prose poems by Lu Xun 魯迅. From “Waking” 一覺:

Planes on a mission to drop bombs, like the start of class at school every morning, fly over Beijing. Everytime I hear the sound of their parts pound the air I repeatedly feel a light tension, as though witnessing a “death” raid. But at the same time intensely feeling the “birth” of existence.

飛機負了擲下炸彈的使命,像學校的上課似的,每日上午在北京城上飛行。每聽得機件搏擊空氣的聲音,我常覺到一種輕微的緊張,宛然目睹了「死」的襲來,但同時也深切地感著「生」的存在。隱約聽到一二爆發聲以後,飛機嗡嗡地叫著,冉冉地飛去了。也許有人死傷了罷,然而天下卻似乎更顯得太平。窗外的白楊的嫩葉,在日光下發烏金光。

Click the image above to access the issue.

New Directions May 2012 Newsletter

New Directions PublishingThe May 2012 newsletter is out from New Directions, with links and news about events, readings, and new publications, including celebrations of Kenneth Rexroth in Corte Madera and San Francisco, Nathaniel Tarn reading in Chicago and Ann Arbor, and a new book by by Robert Walser translated by Christopher Middleton with Susan Bernofsky, and of course Xi Chuan.

New Issue of Cerise Press

The new issue of Cerise Press, the French-based English-language online literature journal, is now available. In addition to translations of poems by editor Fiona Sze-Lorrain of Chinese poets Lan Lan 蓝蓝 and Bai Hua 柏桦 (who’s also interviewed), the current issue features translations of Korean poet Ko Un by Brother Anthony of Taizé and of French poet Auxeméry by one the most secretly influential writer of the last half-century, Nathaniel Tarn. Click the image below for the current issue:

For my feature “Xi Chuan: Poetry of the Anti-lyric” from the last issue, with translations of “Power Outage” 停电, “Re-reading Borges’s Poetry” 重读博尔赫斯诗歌, and “Three Chapters on Dusk” 黄昏三章, click here. (And here for my earlier co-translations of poems by Bei Dao 北岛 with Clayton Eshleman).