Bubbles

This poem is from the recent work of the poet and translator Li Li, who is famous in China but lamentably little-known in the United States. In his latest poems, he tackles the private pain of his father's death, and embarks on a more generalized exploration of animal and human suffering. His work is characterized by a strong Buddhist bent, which emerges in many of the revelatory moments in his poems. Part of the reason Li's work is so compelling is that he has a wide range of reference and experience with the outside world. Li recently moved back to China after living in Sweden for over twenty years. Li was studying in Sweden in 1989 and like many others decided not to return home after the events in Tiananmen that summer. While abroad, he worked as a translator (both from and into Swedish), and also wrote his own original poetry in Swedish. The influence of this mixing of cultures and languages is seen throughout his work, in the richness and strangeness of some of his imagery, and in the cold and austere stance of many of his most affecting poems. His is a truly unique voice, not only in the realm of Chinese poetry, but in the poetry that has entered the global consciousness. He also offers a rare window on Chinese culture: the observations of a man returned from self-exile, who has the perspective of both an insider and an outsider. His poetry is full of the tensions of that dynamics of alienation/attraction. Translating his work can be challenging. His language, especially the syntax, carries a trace of foreignness, and in some cases is charmingly old-fashioned. In "Bubbles," the main challenge was to capture the plainness of the diction and the colloquial feeling while preparing for moments of startling beauty, like shadows in the water that "dance into cuttlefish."