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Floral Mutter
Ya Shi, an "outsider" poet, who teaches math and lives 1,000 miles from the Beijing literary scene, is celebrated among lovers of Chinese poetry from the conservative to the avant-garde. This bilingual (Chinese/English) collection draws together jagged and intense short lyrics, wild nature sonnets, and genre-bending prose poetry from across his career. His work is rooted in the independent spirit, folk imagination and tough music of the people of Sichuan, and combines iconoclasm and heart to demonstrate what's possible in Chinese poetry today.
- GenresPoetry
144 pages, Paperback
Published August 14, 2018
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29 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
July 27, 2025
If you have yet to buy or borrow this book and want to know if you can or should or will then all you need to hear is a single word: Yes.
» I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.«
— Bilbo Baggins
This review is only intended for those who don’t need it — those of you who have ALLREADY read Floral Mutter by Ya Shi Translated from Chinese by Nick Admussen.
The following is more for those who are merely curious about the unsolicited disorganised and comma spliced opinions of a single reader. If that isn’t what you wanted to read right now please move along and read what you really want. I want reading to be pleasant or at the very least — whimsical.
A function is termed bijective if it has two more qualities both injective (one-to-one) and surjective (onto). For a function to have both it means that there is a lid for every pot AND a pot for every lid.
The statement
«Everything I say is untrue»
Can only be a true statement until I say it
Once I say it, it becomes untrue which means something I say IS true.
What if it is the first thing I have ever said? In that moment is it true or false?
The question is moot because not EVERYTHING I say is untrue but when I answered the Goodreads question of finishing the book it was both a patent lie and a latent ambiguity. I don’t think I’ve finished reading this because I think there is more there than I got on the first two readings and because nearly half of the book is in Chinese which is something I will likely never be able to read.
Can poetry be translated? Should poetry be translated? Is
Translation bijective? Are matter and energy really the same and there is a fixed amount of whatever that thing is that keeps changing forms back and forth? Is time how we experience that space is expanding?
Integers are counting numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, … to infinity
You can represent them as n (for number or iNteger)
The line segment from zero to 1 can map the infinite counting numbers f(n) = 1/n
f(1) = 1
f(2) = 1/2
…
So you begin at one but approach zero hesitantly. My childhood understanding of infinity broke. As Joseph Campbell said, “Heaven isn’t eternal … it’s merely everlasting.”
Our understanding of time travel means moving from a fixed point in space time to another fixed point in space time and then proceeding from that new place in the usual clockwise manner until you return to the original point with no time passing. Scrooge and Superman and George Bailey and Shrek and Marty McFly all utilised this but were able to remain fixed in terms of geography on the skin of the earth even though it was unlikely to be a fixed point relative to the galaxy or solar system or even continental drift. Sounds like the pretentious picknit my father tells me I am.
How is it on a sunny day the sun appears like a perfect circle but when it is obscured by an eclipse we can see the corona? How come the absence of the sun reveals that it is even more than we knew?
So, can poetry be translated in a bijective way? Admussen seems to argue its impossibility. He points out on p 115 that there are readers who prefer a stricter correspondence between languages. I would argue that the diction »exploded just a bit« (7) is better than »gradually blowing apart« (115) not in my opinion alone but more importantly in the opinion of Ya Shi who should best know what he wanted to achieve.
Poetry is often a collaboration between two people sometimes separated by time and space. If the poem being published in the original Chinese is the origin point there are an infinite series of rays leaving that origin in all directions. Imagine a poem at the centre of the earth and every being alive or dead has a spiderweb silk from their heart to that origin point. The poem exists and is tied to everything even if it is never read by one individual in Chinese because they don’t speak it. The translation exists and is tied to every being alive or dead by infinite flexible and penetrating chords even if they never laid eyes on it.
How is it possible to have a one to one correspondence when language has seemingly infinite asymmetry?
It is because no matter if we speak at all or what languages we learn we all have the same origin point and the same destination point. If we all have the same origin point and the same destination point then all of our line segments are indistinguishable and equivalent in fact. The chance of wealth and health and ability vs poverty and trials and challenges. Our solid stone houses obscure and eclipse the starlight within all of us living or dead or yet to live.
Thank you for the poems and thank you for the translations.
» I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.«
— Bilbo Baggins
This review is only intended for those who don’t need it — those of you who have ALLREADY read Floral Mutter by Ya Shi Translated from Chinese by Nick Admussen.
The following is more for those who are merely curious about the unsolicited disorganised and comma spliced opinions of a single reader. If that isn’t what you wanted to read right now please move along and read what you really want. I want reading to be pleasant or at the very least — whimsical.
A function is termed bijective if it has two more qualities both injective (one-to-one) and surjective (onto). For a function to have both it means that there is a lid for every pot AND a pot for every lid.
The statement
«Everything I say is untrue»
Can only be a true statement until I say it
Once I say it, it becomes untrue which means something I say IS true.
What if it is the first thing I have ever said? In that moment is it true or false?
The question is moot because not EVERYTHING I say is untrue but when I answered the Goodreads question of finishing the book it was both a patent lie and a latent ambiguity. I don’t think I’ve finished reading this because I think there is more there than I got on the first two readings and because nearly half of the book is in Chinese which is something I will likely never be able to read.
Can poetry be translated? Should poetry be translated? Is
Translation bijective? Are matter and energy really the same and there is a fixed amount of whatever that thing is that keeps changing forms back and forth? Is time how we experience that space is expanding?
Integers are counting numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, … to infinity
You can represent them as n (for number or iNteger)
The line segment from zero to 1 can map the infinite counting numbers f(n) = 1/n
f(1) = 1
f(2) = 1/2
…
So you begin at one but approach zero hesitantly. My childhood understanding of infinity broke. As Joseph Campbell said, “Heaven isn’t eternal … it’s merely everlasting.”
Our understanding of time travel means moving from a fixed point in space time to another fixed point in space time and then proceeding from that new place in the usual clockwise manner until you return to the original point with no time passing. Scrooge and Superman and George Bailey and Shrek and Marty McFly all utilised this but were able to remain fixed in terms of geography on the skin of the earth even though it was unlikely to be a fixed point relative to the galaxy or solar system or even continental drift. Sounds like the pretentious picknit my father tells me I am.
How is it on a sunny day the sun appears like a perfect circle but when it is obscured by an eclipse we can see the corona? How come the absence of the sun reveals that it is even more than we knew?
So, can poetry be translated in a bijective way? Admussen seems to argue its impossibility. He points out on p 115 that there are readers who prefer a stricter correspondence between languages. I would argue that the diction »exploded just a bit« (7) is better than »gradually blowing apart« (115) not in my opinion alone but more importantly in the opinion of Ya Shi who should best know what he wanted to achieve.
Poetry is often a collaboration between two people sometimes separated by time and space. If the poem being published in the original Chinese is the origin point there are an infinite series of rays leaving that origin in all directions. Imagine a poem at the centre of the earth and every being alive or dead has a spiderweb silk from their heart to that origin point. The poem exists and is tied to everything even if it is never read by one individual in Chinese because they don’t speak it. The translation exists and is tied to every being alive or dead by infinite flexible and penetrating chords even if they never laid eyes on it.
How is it possible to have a one to one correspondence when language has seemingly infinite asymmetry?
It is because no matter if we speak at all or what languages we learn we all have the same origin point and the same destination point. If we all have the same origin point and the same destination point then all of our line segments are indistinguishable and equivalent in fact. The chance of wealth and health and ability vs poverty and trials and challenges. Our solid stone houses obscure and eclipse the starlight within all of us living or dead or yet to live.
Thank you for the poems and thank you for the translations.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 31, 2024
A poet who attempts a different thing in different books. Admirable! I'm most drawn to the Holderlin-inspired sonnets on nature and to fantastical and philosophical essays, but the other sections also evince a sharp, inquiring mind engaging with society's foibles.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews