Geometry
Watch
how I hand a whole garden
back to the wild: squirrels, ring-necked pheasants,
rabbit milkweed, silvergrass, Chinese elder.
I decipher the garden’s geometry
in triangles, polygons, pyramids, spheres.
Now that it’s autumn
let me redefine this world.
In the mirror my face
not quite symmetrical.
Light and shadow show something
but hide more,
never focused.
This is critical.
Vagrant or migrant birds,
the golden raintree flowering
with the chrysanthemums,
a tanka of morning dew.
The last quarter moon,
cracked eggshell afloat on water:
night has arrived.
Bird’s-nest ferns breed asexually.
Stars proofread in braille.
Time’s bats, overdosed,
hang inverted. In flight, their squeaks
reach from the larynx
through my world,
then back to their own ears,
finding the edge of crisis.
Buddhist Pine
Taipei, November
1
In lotus posture
it blends with the lichen,
a meditative painting
more tranquil than a cat
and closer to the cleanness of rain,
the tranquility of stone,
undisturbed by birds or insects,
inside, outside time and space,
ambiguous,
polysemous,
a feline plant
my Buddhist pine.
2
Winter, spring,
seasons leave no trace.
This winged apsara, three chi tall,
as if a sacred canopy, its green peaks
mimicking a mountain range,
stanch as a young Greek spearbearer
in balanced antitheses.
A form so classical
withstands weather
and the flickered shadow
of a passing butterfly.
Daylight’s white paper
leaves no trace, nor the sound
of cars, people, dogs.
Two Poems
Chen Yuhong
translated from the Chinese by George O'Connell and Diana Shi
Read the original in Chinese, Traditional
Listen to a recording of "Geometry" read in the original Chinese by the poet:
Over my long collaboration with Diana Shi, our translational philosophy and method have proved consistent. Since the process of translating good poetry remains for us an empirical, partly intuitive art, we are often uncertain what may translate well until the work is underway. In selecting any poetry, our first criterion is literary excellence, but also translatability, an aspect not always evident at once. Chen Yuhong’s splendid poems, accessible yet sophisticated, travel well, and should appeal to a broad range of readers.
Regarding the textures and substance of her poetry, Chen’s urbane sensibilities expand their international reach. Her knowledge of music—its instruments, terminology, and composition—provides a richly metaphorical lexicon for conjuring mood, angles of thought or light, animal presence, tides of summer, spring, or fall. Similarly, her grasp of time’s elasticity invests many of her poems. While her imagery might now deliver the concrete evocation and sensuality of physical existence, it may next glide over the threshold of transcendence, then return to earth. Chen’s world can be alive with blossomings, flowers that punctuate or announce a season, their fragrance rich or evanescent, transient or perennial. In contrast to interminable summer heat or winter drizzle, the sudden caprice of fate or spirit may arrive with its own derangements. This poet acknowledges how the unexpected may terrify or astonish, how the surreal draws strength from both material and abstract realms. The force of her imagery carries almost unmediated through the original to the translation.
If Chen inherits an eastern tradition, she remains fully conversant with the West. Her poems encounter the hotel rooms of Edward Hopper, the rigid limbs of ancient Greek kouroi, the nerve-gassed children of Syria, Akhmatova’s Russia, and the Vancouver seashore. Yet her universe, however tangible, retains at its core a profound solitude, perhaps like the shadowy interior of a violin, an emptiness where the strings’ vibrations resonate and amplify.
Regarding the textures and substance of her poetry, Chen’s urbane sensibilities expand their international reach. Her knowledge of music—its instruments, terminology, and composition—provides a richly metaphorical lexicon for conjuring mood, angles of thought or light, animal presence, tides of summer, spring, or fall. Similarly, her grasp of time’s elasticity invests many of her poems. While her imagery might now deliver the concrete evocation and sensuality of physical existence, it may next glide over the threshold of transcendence, then return to earth. Chen’s world can be alive with blossomings, flowers that punctuate or announce a season, their fragrance rich or evanescent, transient or perennial. In contrast to interminable summer heat or winter drizzle, the sudden caprice of fate or spirit may arrive with its own derangements. This poet acknowledges how the unexpected may terrify or astonish, how the surreal draws strength from both material and abstract realms. The force of her imagery carries almost unmediated through the original to the translation.
If Chen inherits an eastern tradition, she remains fully conversant with the West. Her poems encounter the hotel rooms of Edward Hopper, the rigid limbs of ancient Greek kouroi, the nerve-gassed children of Syria, Akhmatova’s Russia, and the Vancouver seashore. Yet her universe, however tangible, retains at its core a profound solitude, perhaps like the shadowy interior of a violin, an emptiness where the strings’ vibrations resonate and amplify.
Chen Yuhong was born and educated in Taiwan, and lived for some years in Canada before settling in Taipei. Essayist and author of eight poetry collections, winner of many awards for both poetry and translation, she is among Taiwan’s most prominent poets. Her latest volume of poems, 霞光及其它 (Half-light), appeared in 2022 from Hung-fan Books. The Swedish Institute awarded Chen its 2022 International Cikada Prize in poetry.
Among collections Chen has translated into Chinese are poetry by Louise Glück, Anne Carson, Margaret Atwood, Jack Gilbert, and Carol Ann Duffy, plus a French novel by Matthieu Ricard. Her related awards include the Liang Shih-chiu Literary Translation Prize. Chen’s own poetry has recently appeared in French, Dutch, and Japanese volumes. The poems here are from Impossible Paradise, her translators’ just completed US National Endowment for the Arts Literature project.
George O'Connell is the co-translator with Diana Shi of contemporary Chinese-language poetry. He has received numerous honors for his own poetry, including Atlanta Review’s International Grand Prize and the Pablo Neruda Award, as well as two US National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowships. He served as Fulbright professor of creative writing and literature at Peking University and National Taiwan University. Among his translations with Diana Shi are Darkening Mirror by Wang Jiaxin (Tebot Bach, 2017); Crossing the Harbour: Ten Contemporary Hong Kong Poets (Pangolin House, 2017); Passages: Thirteen Contemporary Taiwan Poets (Bookman Books, 2022); and Capriccio on the Way to Buy Salt: Selected Poems by Han Dong (Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing, 2024).
Diana Shi is the co-recipient of two US National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Felllowships and has collaborated since 2006 with George O’Connell in translating many prominent western and Chinese-speaking poets. In 2012 they launched Pangolin House, an international journal of poetry and art. Her extensive translations from American poet Arthur Sze’s The Glass Constellation appeared in 2023 from China’s Guangxi Normal University Press as 玻璃星座. She recently completed assembling and translating into Chinese 我只要少許 (I Wanted Only a Little), a volume of her selections from American poet Jane Hirshfield.
