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Poetry Month 2016: Bei Dao
Mission The priest gets lost in prayer an air shaft leads to another era: escapees climb over the wall panting words evoke the author’s heart trouble breathe deep, deeper grab the locust tree roots that debate the north wind summer has arrived the treetop is an informer murmurs are a reddish sleep stung by a swarm of bees no, a storm readers one by one clamber onto the shore [From The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems, translated by Eliot Weinberger and Iona Man-Cheong] ~ From the publisher’s Web site: The Rose of Time: New & Selected Poems presents a glowing selection…Read More
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Poetry Month 2016: Lisa Zimmerman
The Exiled Poet Reads to a Mostly Middle Class White Audience The white page is pure amnesia. —Bei Dao When the Chinese poet read his poems in his original tongue symbols turned in his mouth dissolved into words, little singing sounds flew around his face like papery moths saved from a burning decade and into the audience small black brooms swept between two centuries a child’s hands letting go a few, a hundred, numberless silk stars. [From How the Garden Looks from Here] ~ From the publisher’s Web site: Lisa Zimmerman received her M.F.A. from Washington University in St.Read More
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Play Misty For Me
I have to admit that I’ve often been baffled by Bei Dao‘s poems. It is impossible not to admire his biography, but his poetry—”misty” in Chinese—strikes me as cryptic in English. I’m not saying that his primary translators, Bonnie S. McDougall and David Hinton, haven’t done good work; I’ve always felt that the difficulties lay in Bei Dao’s work itself, and in the cultural/political context which no introductory remarks or footnotes, however assiduous, can provide.Read More
Joseph Hutchison, Colorado Poet Laureate 2014-2019, has published 20 collections of poems and edited or co-edited three poetry anthologies. He currently directs two master’s-level programs for University College at the University of Denver: Professional Creative Writing and Arts & Culture Management. Joe lives with his wife, Melody Madonna, in the mountains southwest of Denver, Colorado, the city where he was born. 
