{"id":4049,"date":"2018-05-07T09:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-05-07T01:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4049"},"modified":"2018-05-01T15:33:58","modified_gmt":"2018-05-01T07:33:58","slug":"peninsula-daily-news-feature-on-red-pine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4049","title":{"rendered":"Peninsula Daily News Feature on Red Pine"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Port<\/a>When it was announced last month that Red Pine (Bill Porter) had won the American Academy of Arts & Letters Thornton Wilder Prize for translation, his local Peninsula Daily News<\/a> <\/em>went out to report.<\/p>\n

The article covers his background:<\/p>\n

He wanted to study anthropology with Margaret Mead at Columbia and applied for financial aid.<\/p>\n

\u201cI noticed there was a language fellowship funded by the defense department for those who wanted to study a rare language. I had just read a book by Alan Watts called \u2018The Way of Zen.\u2019 It made wonderful sense to me and it had some Chinese characters in it. So I wrote in Chinese on a whim. They gave me a four-year fellowship to study anthropology and Chinese. Chinese was hard.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met a monk in Chinatown and he taught me how to meditate and I started spending weekends with him at this retreat place. I realized this is what I wanted to to. It was much more interesting than studying.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo I quit Columbia and went to Taiwan. A fellow grad student had the address of a Buddhist monastery. I studied Chinese so I went there. I stayed at two different monasteries and studied philosophy at a Chinese university.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And also gets into his more recent international popularity:<\/p>\n

\u201cIn China, there is a popular program on TV, like our Sex and the City. It\u2019s the most watched program for people aged 20-40. Last May, the male lead told his girlfriend that she had to start learning more about Chinese culture and she should start with Bill Porter\u2019s books. Fifteen hundred million people watch this program. Boom. I\u2019ve been getting royalties from China ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Wilder award, he plans to buy a new car.<\/p>\n

Fittingly, it is an Escape.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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

When it was announced last month that Red Pine (Bill Porter) had won the American Academy of Arts & Letters Thornton Wilder Prize for translation, his local Peninsula Daily News went out to report. The article covers his background: He … 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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[1355,1988,375,1987],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-13j","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4018,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4018","url_meta":{"origin":4049,"position":0},"title":"Red Pine wins Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 28, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"The American Academy of Arts and Letters has announced the list of writers who'll receive its 2018 awards in literature--including this detail: Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation BILL PORTER (RED PINE) $20,000 to a practitioner, scholar, or patron who has made a significant contribution to the art of literary translation.\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":3743,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3743","url_meta":{"origin":4049,"position":1},"title":"Rain Taxi Talks with Red Pine","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 10, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Red Pine (Bill Porter) speaks with Rain Taxi editor Eric Lorberer and author James Lenfestey about poetry, translation, and how he got his name. https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=p0Vsag3-ERo","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/p0Vsag3-ERo\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2909,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2909","url_meta":{"origin":4049,"position":2},"title":"Red Pine \/ Bill Porter Reviewed in Rain Taxi","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"December 11, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Justin Wadland reviews The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse, translated by Red Pine (Copper Canyon) and Yellow River Odyssey by Bill Porter (Chin Music) for Rain Taxi (author Bill Porter's nom de guerre as translator is Red Pine). The review begins: The translator known as Red Pine thinks of translating in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.raintaxi.com\/New\/media\/yellowriverodyssey-209x271.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2459,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2459","url_meta":{"origin":4049,"position":3},"title":"Bill Porter (Red Pine) in News China","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 14, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A News China article features Bill Porter, a\/k\/a Red Pine \u8d64\u677e. It's mostly a promo for his \"new book, Finding Them Gone, which will also be his final book,\" the article says (forthcoming from Copper Canyon). But it ends with significant details and a point about translating classical Chinese poetry.\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":3439,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3439","url_meta":{"origin":4049,"position":4},"title":"Wadland on Red Pine’s Finding them Gone","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 7, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"The new LARB features Justin Wadland on Finding them Gone: Visiting China\u2019s Poets of the Past, a Chinese poetry guide through China by Red Pine, the avatar of Bill Porter. Wadland begins: IN FINDING THEM GONE, the translator Red Pine, a.k.a. travel writer Bill Porter, calls on more than 40\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/larb-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/02\/finding-243x366.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2723,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2723","url_meta":{"origin":4049,"position":5},"title":"Red Pine on Journeys, Poets, & Best-Sellerdom in China","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"August 4, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"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\u2019t care about how\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\/4049"}],"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=4049"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4051,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4049\/revisions\/4051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}