{"id":3366,"date":"2016-01-13T09:30:50","date_gmt":"2016-01-13T01:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3366"},"modified":"2016-01-04T10:00:55","modified_gmt":"2016-01-04T02:00:55","slug":"morse-reviews-balcoms-xiang-yang","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3366","title":{"rendered":"Morse Reviews Balcom’s Xiang Yang"},"content":{"rendered":"

Canaan Morse reviews John Balcom’s translation of Grass Roots: Selected Poems<\/em> by Xiang Yang\u00a0\u5411\u967d <\/span>(Zephyr) for World Literature Today<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Balcom\u2019s ubiquitous preference for merging verbs into adjectival phrases or deleting them entirely strengthens static image and removes dynamic energies that might be considered noisier in English than in Chinese.<\/p>\n

And yet the poems are not quiet. They are vividly aware of the aporias and ambiguities inherent in the classical Chinese narrative that iterates time through space, and they speak to them … Balcom\u2019s flexible English represents some of these differences with facility; lines like \u201cA bloody rain falls on fields plowed by bullets\u201d stand apart from lines like \u201cThe surprise encounter of the fish and the leaves,\u201d which are brilliant for entirely different reasons. Yet many of his decisions, especially his frequent deletions, seem hard to justify … Balcom\u2019s introduction makes no mention of his process. Translation is frequently maligned as either a derivative act or a violent, domineering one. Perhaps greater transparency could prevent it from being either.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click on the image for the full review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canaan Morse reviews John Balcom’s translation of Grass Roots: Selected Poems by Xiang Yang\u00a0\u5411\u967d (Zephyr) for World Literature Today: Balcom\u2019s ubiquitous preference for merging verbs into adjectival phrases or deleting them entirely strengthens static image and removes dynamic energies that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,814,16],"tags":[93,1031,1503],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-Si","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2934,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2934","url_meta":{"origin":3366,"position":0},"title":"John Balcom’s Xiang Yang forthcoming from Zephyr","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"January 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Zephyr Press will be publishing Grass Roots, a collection of poems by Taiwanese poet Xiang Yang \u5411\u967d, translated by John Balcom. The so-called \u201cthird generation poets,\u201d such as Xiang Yang, Du Ye, and Lo Qing, wanted to see a resurgence of Chinese national and local culture after years of foreign\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3615,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3615","url_meta":{"origin":3366,"position":1},"title":"Balcom\u2019s Ya Hsien on PEN Translated Poetry Shortlist","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"January 19, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Abyss, poems by Ya Hsien \u7602\u5f26, translated by John Balcom (Zephyr Press), has been shortlisted for the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. The $3,000 award recognizes book-length translations of poetry from any language into English published during the current calendar year. The winner will be announced on February\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pen.org\/sites\/default\/files\/Abyss-TIFF.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3601,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3601","url_meta":{"origin":3366,"position":2},"title":"Balcom’s Ya Hsien on PEN Translated Poetry Longlist","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"December 12, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Abyss, poems by Ya Hsien \u7602\u5f26, translated by John Balcom (Zephyr Press), has been longlisted for the 2017 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. The $3,000 award recognizes book-length translations of poetry from any language into English published during the current calendar year. Finalist will be announced on January 18,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/pen.org\/sites\/default\/files\/Abyss-TIFF.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":862,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=862","url_meta":{"origin":3366,"position":3},"title":"Canaan Morse on Contemporary Chinese Poetry","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"April 20, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Over at the Metre Maids poetry blog, Pathlight poetry editor Canaan Morse has a poignant and touching post about contemporary Chinese poetry--featuring discussion of my translation of Xi Chuan's \"The Body and History\" \u4f53\u76f8\u4e0e\u5386\u53f2. Canaan explains: Obscure to a Western reader, \u201cdouble corneas\u201d and heavy earlobes are references to Xiang\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1599,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1599","url_meta":{"origin":3366,"position":4},"title":"Canaan Morse on Xi Chuan’s new book in Chinese","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"February 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"In \"Say What You Won't,\" Canaan Morse reviews Enough for A Dream \u591f\u4e00\u68a6,\u00a0 Xi Chuan's newest collection of poems in Chinese. Morse writes: Local language allows these poems to represent their respective subjects with painful honesty\u2014not through invective, but rather through a soft, playful sarcasm that appears to be one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3049,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3049","url_meta":{"origin":3366,"position":5},"title":"Morse on Bradbury’s Hsia Y\u00fc","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 2, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"At Paper Republic Canaan Morse reviews Salsa by Hsia Y\u00fc \u590f\u5b87 as translated by Steve Bradbury: In order to recreate these transformative linguistic effects, Bradbury uses assonances, parallel structures, and rhymes with English words that may not appear in the original. While we obviously cannot claim (as much as critics\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3366"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3369,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3366\/revisions\/3369"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}