{"id":5198,"date":"2023-07-28T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=5198"},"modified":"2023-07-23T11:48:22","modified_gmt":"2023-07-23T18:48:22","slug":"mukim-on-duo-duos-words-as-grain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=5198","title":{"rendered":"Mukim on Duo Duo’s Words as Grain"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Posting a review of Xi Chuan’s Bloom & Other Poems <\/em>earlier this week made me realize that somehow I had left this blog go dormant for a year! Recently I also came across Mantra Mukim’s fascinating take <\/a>on Duo Duo’s \u591a\u591a Words as Grain<\/em> in The Georgia Review<\/em>, which begins from an analysis of how grass is “also “at the center of the contemporary Chinese poet Duo Duo\u2019s oeuvre, offering refuge and sustenance to the speaker but also an unrelenting sense of fragility.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Grass becomes the name for those marginal \u201csecrets\u201d that the voice takes the risk of bringing to fore, however granularly, with \u201csilence\u201d and \u201cdepths of sorrow\u201d being their point of origin. Klein\u2019s decision to use only lowercase in his translations, obviously not a feature of the logosyllabic Mandarin, is perhaps an extension of Duo Duo\u2019s own attention to the granular and miniscule in language, to its grassy \u201ccover.\u201d While the lowercase has its own near-mythological status in Anglo-American modernism, Klein\u2019s choice seems to speak specifically to Duo Duo\u2019s view of poetry as a weak yet \u201cradiant\u201d force of remembrance and memorializing. The point is that no act of memorializing is without its precarities or its weaknesses. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Mukim also writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Translations of modern Chinese poetry have often been sold to Western readers through a simplified narrative of disclosure, where poets are taken for impresarios removing the cloth from brutal historical events. This peculiar lust for allegories of non-Western national pasts is old news, however, for translators such as Klein, who deftly flags the problem in his introduction and notes why such readerly demands are disappointed by Duo Duo\u2019s poetry, which remains defiantly elliptical and fragmentary. It is not that Duo Duo\u2019s poems do not speak to their adjacent histories, but this dialogue concocts its own singular language nothing like reportage or testimony. If there is a history or a critique of totalitarian politics to be unearthed in these poems, it will only be found by paying attention to the wounds and reprieves of their language, something Duo Duo time and again compares to grass.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Click on the image above for the review in full.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the coming weeks I’ll try to make up for the lost time of not posting for a year, with more reviews and announcements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posting a review of Xi Chuan’s Bloom & Other Poems earlier this week made me realize that somehow I had left this blog go dormant for a year! Recently I also came across Mantra Mukim’s fascinating take on Duo Duo’s … 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":[814],"tags":[515,2282],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-1lQ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5038,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=5038","url_meta":{"origin":5198,"position":0},"title":"Liang Luo on Duo Duo’s Words as Grain","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"September 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Over at Cha, Liang Luo's review of my translation Words as Grain: New and Selected Poems of Duo Duo \u591a\u591a (Yale University Press) has been published. Liang Luo's review of my translation of Words as Grain: New and Selected Poems of Duo Duo \u591a\u591a (Yale University Press) at Cha. She\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Words-as-Grains-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5030,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=5030","url_meta":{"origin":5198,"position":1},"title":"Drew Calvert on Duo Duo’s Words as Grain","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"August 31, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Asymptote has published Drew Calvert's excellent review of Words as Grain: New and Selected Poems by Duo Duo \u591a\u591a (Yale University Press). Drew Calvert on Words as Grain Here's an excerpt: That bounty is now on full display in English, thanks to Lucas Klein, the translator of Words as Grain:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=814"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/Words-as-Grains-cover.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5046,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=5046","url_meta":{"origin":5198,"position":2},"title":"John Bradley on Duo Duo’s Words as Grain","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"September 27, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"John Bradley on Words as Grain for Rain Taxi The current print issue of Rain Taxi features John Bradley's review of my translation Words as Grain: New and Selected Poems of Duo Duo \u591a\u591a (Yale University Press). Bradley writes: Klein does a superb job of keeping the English translations as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Reviews"","block_context":{"text":"Reviews","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=814"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/242742686_583690352992236_3924342777136856380_n-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/242742686_583690352992236_3924342777136856380_n-scaled.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/242742686_583690352992236_3924342777136856380_n-scaled.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/242742686_583690352992236_3924342777136856380_n-scaled.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/242742686_583690352992236_3924342777136856380_n-scaled.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/242742686_583690352992236_3924342777136856380_n-scaled.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":5075,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=5075","url_meta":{"origin":5198,"position":3},"title":"Duo Duo’s Words as Grain Nominated for PEN Award for Poetry in Translation","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"January 10, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Words as Grain on the 2021 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation longlist Last month PEN announced the longlists for its 2021 awards--and Words as Grain: New and Selected Poems of Duo Duo \u591a\u591a (Yale University Press) is in the running for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation! Click\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Awards"","block_context":{"text":"Awards","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=2276"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4797,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4797","url_meta":{"origin":5198,"position":4},"title":"New Poetry by Duo Duo in Harvard Review","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"April 22, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Duo Duo's \"That Time\" \u90a3\u65f6, translated byLucas Klein, in Harvard Review The Harvard Review has just published my translation of \"That Time\" \u90a3\u65f6, by Duo Duo \u591a\u591a, a section from his series The Desire of the Rose Now the Same as the Desire of Swords \u73ab\u7470\u7684\u6b32\u671b\u5df2\u7ecf\u4e0e\u5251\u7684\u6b32\u671b\u4e00\u81f4. In the brief introduction,\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":937,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=937","url_meta":{"origin":5198,"position":5},"title":"Duo Duo at the Prague Writers’ Festival","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"The Chinese poet Duo Duo \u591a\u591a attended the Prague Writers' Festival last month, and they have put up a page of his interviews, readings, prose as translated by John Crespi, and poetry translated by Mai Mang \u9ea6\u8292. 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