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Poems by Bei Dao
- Description
- Excerpt
- Author
- Reviews
Leaving Home
The compass jokingly
points toward a state of mind
you drink up the soup and leave
this scene of life
on the application form of
sky and electric wires, a tree
trembling to fly
so what can it write about?
no matter what happens, you’ll
recognize the danger
a crowd of strangers sitting
at journey’s end
at night the wind steals bells
the long-haired bride
quivers like a bowstring
over the body of the groom
Translated by
Eliot Weinberger and Iona Man-Cheong
The sixth collection by China’s foremost contemporary poet, Bei Dao, was greeted as perhaps his finest on its publication in America. The 49 poems were written in the USA, and have been translated into English by Eliot Weinberger (the distinguished essayist and translator of Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges) in collaboration with the historian Iona Man-Cheong and with Bei Dao himself. Saturated with startling, surreal imagery and oblique political references, this book shows the restless development in style which is the hallmark of the authentically innovative poet.
Bei Dao
Bei Dao, pen name of Zhao Zhenkai which means ‘northisland’, was born in Beijing in 1949. Hailed as ‘the soul of post-Mao poetry’(Yunte Huang) and praised for his ‘intense lyricism’ (Pankaj Mishra), Bei Daois one of contemporary China’s most distinguished poets and the cofounder ofthe landmark underground literary journal Jintian
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Eliot Weinberger ’s first study of multiple Chinese translations was the perennially popular 19 Ways of Looking at Wang Wei (1987). His essays are collected in Works on Paper, Outside Stories and Karmic Traces . Among his many translations are The Collected Poems of Octavio Paz 1957–1987, Bei Dao’s
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Iona Man-Cheong is an Associate Professor of History at the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
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Praise for Bei Dao
'The language of Bei Dao's memoir, seamlessly translated by fellow poet Yang, is elegantly simple and guilelessly accessible....Winter white cabbage, vinyl records, pet rabbits, banned books, and first and last 'I love yous' provide intimate glimpses that 'open up' to reveal extraordinary, immediate testimony of challenges survived in a life intensely lived.'
Booklist of City Gate, Open Up (US edition, published by New Directions)
'This is a nuanced account of China in the era of the Cultural Revolution, seen through one young man's eyes. Since that young man became a poet, it is also beautifully textured, full of the sounds, sights, and scents of a Beijing that is no more.'
Publishers Weekly of City Gate, Open Up (US edition, published by New Directions)
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