{"id":297736,"date":"2014-04-23T20:23:21","date_gmt":"2014-04-23T20:23:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2014\/04\/23\/his-days-go-by-the-way-her-years-by-ye-mimi-why-this-book-should-win\/"},"modified":"2018-05-04T15:11:55","modified_gmt":"2018-05-04T15:11:55","slug":"his-days-go-by-the-way-her-years-by-ye-mimi-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2014\/04\/23\/his-days-go-by-the-way-her-years-by-ye-mimi-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"“His Days Go By the Way Her Years” by Ye Mimi [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

With this post we\u2019re kicking off the \u201cWhy This Book Should Win<\/a>\u201d series for this year\u2019s BTBA<\/span> Poetry Finalists.<\/a> This piece is by judge Anna Rosenwong.<\/a> <\/i><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

His Days Go By the Way Her Years<\/em><\/a> by Ye Mimi, translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury (Taiwan; Anomalous Press)<\/b><\/p>\n

the train sidles into the station at the stroke of noon\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0like a tidy row of bento
\nyou toss off your mackintosh\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0and fly, fly away
\ncalling to mind a practical exercise\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0slanting rhymes:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

bite off the break
\nskirt the precipitous brink<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

the ghosts in the first level basement
\nawait
\nthe coming of man from Mars<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

you open up your backpack then
\nknock back a bootle of Espa\u00f1ol
\nfor that next tastefully unfamiliar excursion<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Ye Mimi excerpted from \u201cI Didn\u2019t Know You Didn\u2019t Know I Didn\u2019t Know: For \u2018Sis\u2019\u201d )<\/p>\n

In the end, only one chapbook proved muscular enough to make it onto the BTBA<\/span> poetry shortlist. And at just 29 bilingual pages and 10 poems, it does feel audacious to set this slim introduction to a young poet against the likes of a door-stopping volume of Roberto Bola\u00f1o\u2019s complete poetry and a long overdue first English collection of Sohrab Sepehri, one of Iran\u2019s foremost poets of the 20th century. But Ye Mimi\u2019s His Days Go By the Way Her Years<\/em> is an audacious book. Its limited run was beautifully letterpress printed by Erica Mena at the envelope-pushing Anomalous Press, having been chosen as a finalist in their inaugural chapbook contest by Christian Hawkey. Most importantly, the marvel of its translation comes thanks to that passionate proponent of experimental Taiwanese poetry and beloved American Literary Translators Association stalwart, Steve Bradbury. In less virtuosic and fearless hands than his, this collection would be an impossibility. I am grateful to all of these collaborators for introducing me to Ye Mimi and her swirling, sometimes manic charm. Chapbooks are often overlooked, but they represent an unparalleled avenue for small, ambitious publishers to bring us the world.<\/p>\n

The ten exclamatory, cuttingly modern poems of His Days Go By the Way Her Years<\/em> are shot through with sonic gamesmanship, punning, the unbridled verbing of nouns, and voraciously transcultural allusion. Many also perform an oscillation between coy formal disruption and seductive dream logic, as in the typographically resistant line: \u201c every one of the \u25fb\u25fb<\/sup> \/ could find themselves sluiced by the \u25fb\u25fb\u25fb<\/sup> into a water melon frappe of a summer season.\u201d The poems are well aware of their own cleverness, but resist turning precious as they revel in grotesque particulars and subversions of the ordinary stuff of life and poetic diction. In \u201cThe More Car the More Far,\u201d Ye Mimi asserts:<\/p>\n

Solitude is somewhat sweeter than water.
\nFish are crunchier on the outside, softer in the middle than the sea.
\nFrom this day henceforth I will go forth and wilderness the wilderness.
\nShe sang.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ye Mimi does sing, and His Days Go By the Way Her Years<\/em> represents just a small sample of Bradbury\u2019s translations of her work. May it pave the way for more joyful, defiant, aggressively wonderful poems, more wildernessing, more international literary prizes for Ye Mimi!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With this post we\u2019re kicking off the \u201cWhy This Book Should Win\u201d series for this year\u2019s BTBA Poetry Finalists. This piece is by judge Anna Rosenwong.   His Days Go By the Way Her Years by Ye Mimi, translated from the Chinese by Steve Bradbury (Taiwan; Anomalous Press) the train sidles into the station at […]<\/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":[55936,42786,35996,55926,55916,42826,37876,55906],"class_list":["post-297736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-anna-rosenwong","tag-anomalous-press","tag-btba","tag-chinese-literature-taiwanese-literature","tag-his-days-go-by-the-way-her-years","tag-steve-bradbury","tag-why-this-book-should-win","tag-ye-mimi"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297736","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=297736"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397252,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297736\/revisions\/397252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=297736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=297736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=297736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}