American poet, translator, and novelist Forrest Gander has been nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award for his book Core Samples from the World, a book of poems covering his travels around the globe. One of the poems, the fourth “Map of the World,” is dedicated to Xi Chuan, and another, the haibun “The Pamirs Poetry Journal,” makes mention of him:

As Chinese poets, we don’t want to go backward, Xi Chuan observes, but ahead of us the way forks in innumerable directions. Forgetting which language he has just heard, but remembering the substance, the exhausted translator begins to translate the original language into the original language. I find I’m inept at reading the forms of discussion here, much less the subtleties. What I take as evident bounces away from me. I begin to notice tensions, faces shaking no, one translator interrupting another. The topic, Where is Chinese poetry going in the age of globalization, is enormous and of course the answer will be found in poems, not panels, so I try not just to listen, but to listen into.

What else is being
Asked, what’s
At stake for them?