Where I'm More than Usually Grumpy

The Selected Poems of Li Po by Li Bai
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The more I read this, the more it bugged me.

I usually like Li Po, having read his poetry in a couple different collections, but I really didn't like the translation in this one. It just didn't work for me. The rhythm came to grate on me, and I liked it less every page I turned. I hate-read the last 20 pages.

(I seldom give a negative or harsh review, but I feel free saying this because so many people like this translation, and the guy has won translation awards. He'll be fine. I can be a random data point way over on the edge that everyone can just ignore...)

Thing is, I was really looking forward to this. Thought I was gonna love it. But it's all translated in a terse, elliptical, sentence-fragment way. It's stingy with verbs and connecting words like articles and prepositions. It was a stylistic choice; I think it's meant to more nearly resemble the original Chinese than is often the case, and for other readers I guess it paid off. But I found it hard to read and hard to connect to. I'd get stuck on top-heavy sentences, looking for the verb that sometimes never showed up, and I'd have to re-read and re-parse every line. It wasn't intuitive or simple, and the struggle took me out of the poetry.

Like this. Take a look. These are lovely images, but the translation is so angular, so sharp:

Heaven temple, Shui-hsi Monastery:
east wall lit beneath cloud brocade,
sounds of a clear stream tumbling past,
green bamboo harboring tower rooms.

I'm totally ready to dig this, but it feels like a poem made of dry sticks tied with a string.

Another poem begins this way:

War last year at the Sang-kan's headwaters;
war this year on the roads at T'sung River.

And another:

Thoughts of you unending
here in Ch'ang-an,
crickets where the well mirrors year-end golds cry out
autumn, and under a thin frost, mats look cold, ice-cold.

I mean, at least there's a verb there at the end, finally. I was pretty psyched. But it's dense, and that crickets line seems to have no beginning or end, just a lot of middle...

Anyway. Whatever. I'm sure it's my bad. Everybody else thinks it's awesome.

I've found another collection with a different translator. Fingers crossed.

View all my reviews