Across Borders

by Xue Di, Alison Friedman (Translator)

The Chinese poet Xue Di came to the United States immediately after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 in Beijing, becoming writer-in-residence at Brown University and a fellow in Brown's Freedom to Write program. Across Borders , his third book of poetry, presents in a bilingual (Chinese and English) edition marvelously rich prose poems, shimmering with dream-like detail.

144 pages, Paperback

First published April 15, 2014

Reviews

[Reader · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed Alison Friedman's explanations of her decisions in translating the work, the footnotes, and, of course, Xue Di's lyrically charged poetry. The book is physically perfect--it fits in the hands so nicely, and the mirrored Chinese (simplified characters) and English are rendered beautifully. Xue Di writes with passion, urging and breathless. He writes of a home he cannot return to and a self that is at once turning, drifting, exposed.

"Poets! Write the whispers of your soul. Write what Power prohibits. Write yourself: your filth, your transgression desires, our hubris, dreams realized and dreams deferred. Poets, transcribe each breath that carried you here. Write yourself: your blood, your bones, your tattered flesh . . . My poems grasp for others like me -- if but to hold them."

"I search for paths to return to myself."

[Denvy · Rating 3 out of 5]

If anything, this book proves that the Chinese language is impossible to translate well. There are some things that are so much better said in the original language.