Wen Yiduo is an exquisite poet, one of modern China’s best. Only a poet can do justice to translating poetry, and Robert Dorsett does justice.

— Perry Link, University of California, Riverside

The virtue of this translation is that it offers a dance, which preserves the essence of the original. Robert Hammond Dorsett is comfortable with the outward trappings of meter and rhyme, devising elegant solutions at every turn and turning.

— From the Foreword by Christopher Merrill,

International Writing Program, University of Iowa

Robert Dorsett’s versions of Wen Yiduo give us access to a writer whose poems feel like fresh air. These translations express beautifully the poet’s passionate restraint, his exactitude, and his struggle toward self-definition, the sublime and the mysterious.

— Marvin Bell, poet, Iowa Writers’ Workshop, University of Iowa

YOU PLEDGE BY THE SUN

I’ll love you till the seas dry, the stones rot…
You pledge by the sun, by returning pairs
of geese swear loyalty. I believe you. Even if you break
passionately into tears, I won’t be taken back.
But if you say till the seas dry, stones rot,
I’d die laughing. Isn’t this short time we have together
enough to intoxicate me? And you say forever?
Love, you know I have only one passing desire:
Come, embrace me tightly! Hurry! Oh, go, go…
I’m on to this trick—nothing’s changed—
your forever belongs to someone else—the chaff’s for me—
another has your essence, your eternal spring.
You don’t believe me? The day Death summons you
you’ll go, you’ll go into his embrace—you’ll talk to him
of your till seas dry, stones rot, undying fidelity.

PERHAPS

Perhaps you’re tired crying.
Perhaps you need to rest awhile.
I’ll tell the owls not to cough,
frogs not to shout, the bats not to fly.
I won’t let sunlight pry your eyelids,
a breeze touch your brow. Nothing
will disturb you. The umbrella
of a pine tree shades your sleep.
Perhaps you hear earthworms
chew the soil, grass rootlets sip water.
Perhaps you find this music more
pleasing than our quibbling voices.
Then tightly close your eyes…
I’ll let you sleep; I’ll let you sleep.
I’ll cover you gently with yellow earth,
burn paper offerings so they softly fly.

IMPRESSIONS OF AN EARLY SUMMER NIGHT

(May 1922, the time of the warlords)
Sunset bequeaths a troubling night.
The poet forces night to give up its secrets:
Dew scatters beneath the sky’s purple vault;
the poet thinks: beads to be strung for the chests of the dead.
An icy wind rakes the desiccated hair of a starving willow.
Lamplight reflected in a pond twists like a snake.
Hanging mid-mountain, a horribly crippled cypress
stiffly shakes its black, skinny fists, challenges air.
The frogs haven’t slept. Shouldn’t they be tired?
They croak the swamp’s battle hymns even louder.
All those village dogs bark with such agony.
Why can’t they break the courage of the thieves?
A dragon chews fire, spits smoke, claws up an iron ladder.
An army train lugs its war cargo, screams as if alive.
The night watch clangs his bronze-tongued, stone bell,
tells everyone, “Relax, go back to sleep.” And they believe it!
Hey God! Can’t you see this degraded universe?
Can’t you feel its chill? Hey, Benevolent God!

Author: Wen Yidou (1899-1946)

The son of a well-to-do Hubei family and a product of its privileged status, he was introduced to the West at an early age, eventually studying western painting in Chicago and New York from 1922-25. Upon his return to China, he became a university professor, leading literary critic and scholar, and soon an outspoken critic of the Nationalists. His speeches became more political and defiant as the army’s suppression of student demonstrations became bloodier. On June 6, 1946, at 5pm, after stepping out of the office of the Democratic Weekly, Wen Yiduo died in a hail of bullets. Mao blamed the Nationalists, and thus transformed Wen into a paragon of the revolution.

Translator: Robert Hammond Dorsett

Robert Dorsett studied Chinese at the Yale-in-China Program at the Chinese University in Hong Kong. He received an M.D. degree from the State University of New York and completed his training in pediatrics at Cornell. He also has an M.F.A. degree from New York University, where he subsequently taught creative writing.

Robert has translated many individual poems and essays from the Chinese. With David Pollard, he translated the memoirs of Gao Ertai, In Search of My Homeland: A Memoir of a Chinese Labor Camp (HarperCollins 2009). Stagnant Water is his second book of translations. In 2021, Crown Books released Robert’s latest translation, Selected Poems by Ai Qing. Ai Qing was the father of the artist Ai Weiwei, who’s now living in exile. Ai Qing had at one time been a favorite of Mao, like Wen Yiduo. Unlike Wen, however, Ai Qing eventually ran afoul of the dictator and like Ertai Gao, was sentenced to hard labor in labor camp in a remote part of the country, along with his entire family. This is where Ai Weiwei grew up, in fact.

Robert has also published his own poetry in The Literary Review, Thea Kenyon Review, Poetry, and elsewhere. Formerly a senior physician at Kaiser Hospital Oakland, he now writes full time.

Calligrapher: Huang Xiang

Poet and master calligrapher Huang Xiang, who provided the calligraphy for this volume, left China after numerous imprisonments due to his advocacy for human rights. On arriving in the U.S., he became the first writer in residence at City of Asylum/Pittsburgh (2004-06). During his stay there, he created “House Poem” on the façade of his residence on Sampsonia Way. He also published Pittsburgh Dream Nest Jotting, a book of Chinese-language essays on his experiences in Pittsburgh. City of Asylum/Pittsburgh also commissioned a translation of Huang’s poetry, A Lifetime is a Promise to Keep: Poems of Huang Xiang, published by the Institute of East Asian Studies in 2009. More recently, Huang has collaborated with American painter William Rock on their “Century Mountain Project.”