{"id":282826,"date":"2011-03-29T15:04:24","date_gmt":"2011-03-29T15:04:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2011\/03\/29\/flash-cards-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T15:14:26","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T15:14:26","slug":"flash-cards-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2011\/03\/29\/flash-cards-why-this-book-should-win-the-btba\/","title":{"rendered":"Flash Cards [Why This Book Should Win the BTBA]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Starting this week, we\u2019ll be highlighting the five finalists in the poetry category for the BTBA<\/span>. Similar to what we did for the fiction longlist,<\/a> these will be framed by the question: \u201cWhy should this book win?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Click here<\/a> for all past and future posts in this series.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today\u2019s post is by poetry committee member Idra Novey. Idra is the director of the Literary Translation at Columbia University program, a poet, and a translator. It\u2019s worth noting here that her translation of Manoel de Barros\u2019s \u201cBirds for a Demolition\u201d was eligible for this year\u2019s BTBA<\/span>, but was excluded from consideration based on the fact that Idra was a judge. That said, over on the fiction side, her translation of \u201cOn Elegance While Sleeping\u201d is a finalist.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Flash Cards<\/em><\/b> by YU Jian, translated by Wang Ping and Ron Padgett<\/p>\n

Language:<\/b> Chinese
\nCountry:<\/b> China
\nPublisher:<\/b> Zephyr Press & the Chinese University Press
\nPages:<\/b> 151<\/p>\n

Why This Book Should Win:<\/b> Because Yu Jian knows we should avoid comparing ourselves to fish: they\u2019re doomed, the lake drying up. Because Yu Jian has many lines that are this tragic and funny and involve washing machines and the Chinese army.<\/p>\n

So many American poets are currently struggling with how to write about our environment. It\u2019s an important questions, and I\u2019ve been reading new pastorals: poems of lament, elegies for the flora and fauna that we\u2019re rapidly losing and won\u2019t get back. But here comes Yu Jian, writing about nature\u2014and more\u2014in a new way that addresses loss with humor and with a lack of familiar binaries.<\/p>\n

In Flash Cards<\/em>, his first collection to appear in English translation, he writes of frogs that died in 1998 along with their pond, but also of the mosquitoes that remain there, \u201csometimes conversing in English.\u201d It\u2019s hard to translate humor well, especially in the streamlined language of a poem, but American poet Ron Padgett and Chinese poet Wang Ping do an extraordinary job of getting the tone right every time. \u201cConversing\u201d is just the verb for a wry, quirky line like this in English.<\/p>\n

In another poem, when Yu Jian drives to the edge of \u201cthe virgin forest,\u201d the translators go with a car that \u201czooms.\u201d That zoom seems spot on when an imaginary doe leaps into Yu Jian\u2019s heart and he says, \u201cI no longer have a stream or meadow\/ to keep it there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all of the poems in Flash Cards<\/em> are concerned with the natural world, however, or at least not explicitly. One stunning poem begins with \u201cthe washing machine on Saturday\u201d and ends with the declaration:<\/p>\n

Happiness belongs only to a cashmere sweater
\nthat demands a different spin cycle
\nits only wish to match
\nthe mistress\u2019 red skirt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I would argue that happiness also belongs to the reader of Flash Cards<\/em> and to its translators, as the humor and music in these English versions suggests that Wang Ping and Ron Padgett took great pleasure, and care, in translating these poems. If you haven\u2019t yet had the experience of having a woman in heavy makeup and a wolf face turn to you at dusk in the zoo and say in perfect Mandarin, \u201cGood evening, comrade,\u201d you\u2019re in for a delightful surprise with the poetry of Yu Jian.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Starting this week, we\u2019ll be highlighting the five finalists in the poetry category for the BTBA. Similar to what we did for the fiction longlist, these will be framed by the question: \u201cWhy should this book win?\u201d Click here for all past and future posts in this series. Today\u2019s post is by poetry committee member […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[37856,39026,7456,23226,39126,39096,28926,39106,39116,37876,39086,1626],"class_list":["post-282826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-btba-2011","tag-btba-2011-poetry-finalists","tag-chinese-literature","tag-chinese-poetry","tag-chinese-university-press","tag-flash-cards","tag-idra-novey","tag-ron-padgett","tag-wang-ping","tag-why-this-book-should-win","tag-yu-jian","tag-zephyr-press"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282826"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397332,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282826\/revisions\/397332"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}