Customer Reviews

The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems (Bilingual Edition) (New Directions Paperbook)

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(3.5 stars)

Bei Dao is one of the most influential living Chinese poets studied by readers from the West. In this edition of The Rose of Time, New Directions Press has kindly provided both the original and translated version of some of the significant works of the poet. Knowing both languages, I have to say the translators have basically done the job to keep the spirit. Yet readers may find the poems quite hard to follow and understand, though they are syntactically neat and clear. The problem of delivery lies in the leap of images present in the original Chinese version. Bei Dao, if I have to categorize, likes to play with images and most of the time his choices seem rather random and surrealistic (and surprisingly, the randomness contributes to the poetics of the works too). I am not sure about the reasons behind this stylistic matter and there is no point to argue so or in a review. But I very much believe that Bei Dao is using images to help him deliver his viewpoints on political or social incidents that he is not allowed to express directly. One of my favorites in this collection is:

Untitled (p.153)

looking back a few times in the poem
night birds singing together
you set smoke drifting free
toward a place where song vanishes

walking into tomorrow beneath an umbrella
you, a wanderer
set out from your own end
what can replace joy

the century's foxes
leap from abyss to abyss
you see how that glorious bridge
disappears at the sky's edge

morning touches
the secret thought of a walnut
above the passion of water
it's the loneliness of cloud walking