Schuchat reviews Klein’s Duo Duo & Lingenfelter’s Wang Yin

Writing for The Poetry Project, Simon Schuchat has reviewed two books of contemporary Chinese poetry in English translation that came out last year, Duo Duo’ 多多 Words as Grain: New and Selected Poems, translated by Lucas Klein, and by Wang Yin’s 王寅 Ghosts City Sea, translated by Andrea Lingenfelter.

He writes:

Here are two new translations of important and wonderful Chinese poets, by two of the finest contemporary translators of Chinese literature. A northerner and a southerner. One was already adolescent during the Cultural Revolution, the other a primary school student … These two poets speak to the reader, without the formality of direct address in classical poetry, but without losing the paratactic and indeterminate potential of the classical tradition. That acknowledged, both Lucas Klein and Andrea Lingenfelter, consistently achieve the impossible and bring the poetry into English. They recreate voices for the poets themselves, which do not resemble their invisible interpreters.

About Duo Duo in particular, Schuchat says:

his poetry is more than the exile’s lament, and beyond either the hopes of the early reform era or their subsequent crushing first by armed force and then by raging capital. Surrealist poetry, loosely speaking, seeks to produce or transmit an emotional message that resists paraphrase or explanation, jumping over logical connections.

Click the image above for the review in full.

Call for Poetry Translators for Pathlight #4

From Paper Republic:

Chinese content for our next edition of Pathlight: New Chinese Writing has been set in soap, and I’m glad to announce that this issue will include far more poetry than any of the previous issues have. Faced with an abundance of work and a dearth of talented contacts, this is a call for motivated, experienced translators of Chinese poetry to establish a relationship with us. To be featured are Zhu Ling (朱零), Ou Ning (欧宁), Yao Feng (姚风) , Wang Yin (王寅), Wang Xiaolong (王小龙), Yang Zi (杨子), Huang Jinming (黄金明) , Liao Weitang (廖伟棠) and Yang Xiaobin (杨小滨). The deadline is coming up soon; we’ll do our best to assign poems based on their relationship with the translator, and first drafts will be due in mid-September. Compensation is, if I may say so, exceptional for poetry. If interested, please send an email either to canaan@paper-republic.org or westrunningbrook@mac.com.