It’s that time of year again, and this year I’m on time! Like everyone, my 2020 was, to put it mildly, unprecedented. My family and I left China two days after Chinese New Year, 2020, and as of Chinese New Year, 2021, we have been stuck in the U.S. for a year. We have undeniably been more fortunate than many people. We’ve had the support of family and the good fortune of being able to work online, but it has been a challenging year. Reading, as always, has brought me inspiration and enjoyment, and although the extra demands on my time have kept me from reading as much as in previous years, I can honestly say that a my reading this year has transformed me like no year before.
Continue readingMy Work
Imaginary Bio
I’m taking a writing class with Gotham Writers’ Workshop right now, and one of the assignments was to create an imaginary bio for yourself. It was no holds barred, so I could have imagined myself as a legendary world traveller, universally admired academic, or much loved novelist and poet–all of which makes what I did end up writing somewhat puzzling:
Continue readingPoems in Abomination of Winter
I get my news about the U.S. rather slowly. For example, I only just learned of the snowstorm in the Northeast. Much as I would like to gloat and taunt my NYC-dwelling friends about the fact that it never snows here in Chengdu, the reality of the situation is this: I am drinking my coffee hot, the down comforters are on the beds, I am currently wearing two wool sweaters, and although I have not yet put on any thermal underwear, that moment is approaching rapidly. All of this can mean but one thing–winter has arrived–and there is no emoji capable of accurately depicting my feelings on the subject. Continue reading
“America Used to be America (for Me)”: A Poem
I suppose this is my personal homage to Langston Hughes’s great poem, “Let America be America Again,” about which I’ve written here before. Perhaps it’s also my personal update to that poem, my own “creative misprision”–to borrow Harold Bloom’s term–through which I’m trying to say where I think we are and where I hope we’re going. Continue reading
Breaking “The Great Taboo”: A Translation of Li Bai’s 李白 “Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon 月下獨酌”
There is a tradition among English-language translators of Chinese poetry to translate all Chinese poems as unrhymed free-verse. This tradition goes back at least as far as Ezra Pound–whose “translations” bear little resemblance to their originals–and is very much alive and kicking. So much so that I am borrowing the historian, Nathan Sivin’s, term–“The Great Taboo,”–to describe it.
“Yours”: A Poem of Devotion
This poem, which first appeared in the collection of poems I published here last year, was recently published in the Summer 2018 issue of Tokens. Since Tokens is not available online (and has a rather limited circulation!), I thought I’d post it here. Continue reading
The Man with the Beard
I saw a man with a beard on the subway today. You don’t often see beards like that. Continue reading
“Zora Neale Hurston on Racial Identity, Ninety Years Later” has been Published!
I’m pleased to announce that The Columbia Review has published my essay “Zora Neale Hurston on Being Black in America, Ninety Years Later” on their website (the title has been changed to the one you see in the title of this post). If you have a chance click over there and give them a visit. Thanks!
Poetry (6): A Gift of Poetry for the Bicentenary of Bahá’u’lláh’s Birth
October 22nd of this year marks the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Bahá’u’lláh, founder of the Bahá’í Faith and the most recent of God’s Messengers to humanity–whose number includes Christ, Muhammad, Buddha, Krishna, Moses, Zoroaster, and an unknown number of other Messengers whose names have been lost. Continue reading
Poetry (5) and Bicycling Chengdu (4)
Two of my recurring topics in one post–not to shabby! At any rate, I was on my bike again recently. The first line came to me as I set off, I finished the rest of it while waiting for a stoplight to change. I hope you enjoy it! Continue reading
