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Bloom
"Bloom and change your way of living," Xi Chuan exhorts us. "Bloom / unleash a deep underground spring with your rhizome." In his wildly roving new collection, Bloom Other Poems, Xi Chuan, like a modern-day master of the fu-rhapsody, delves into the incongruities of daily existence, its contradictions and echoes of ancient history, with sensuous exaltations and humorous observations. Problems of mourning and reading, thoughts on loquaciousness, Manhattan, the Luxor Temple, and socks are scrutinized, while in other poems we encounter dead friends on a visit to a small village and fakes in an antique market. At one moment we follow the river's flow through the history of Nanjing, in another we follow an exquisite meditation on the golden. Brimming with lyrical beauty and philosophical intensity, the collection ends with a transcript of a conversation between Xi Chuan and the journalist Xu Zhiyuan that earned seventy million views when broadcast online. Award-winning translator Lucas Klein demonstrates in this remarkable bilingual edition that Xi Chuan is one of the most electrifying international poets writing today.
176 pages, Paperback
Published July 12, 2022
4 people are currently reading
117 people want to read
About the author
Xi Chuan
26 books11 followersXi Chuan (official name Liu Jun), poet, essayist, translator, was born in the City of Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, in 1963. He studied English literature at the Peking University from 1981 to 1985, and later worked as an editor for the magazine Huangqiu (Globe Monthly) for eight years. He was a visiting scholar to the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa, in 2002, and a visiting adjunct professor to New York University in 2007, the Orion Scholar to the University of Victoria, Canada in 2009. He is currently teaching Classical Chinese Literature at the School of Liberal Arts, Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing.
Xi Chuan is one of the most influential poets in contemporary China. He has been well known in the Chinese literary scene since his student days. In 1988, he founded, with friends, the unofficial poetry journal Qingxiang (Tendency), which was, however, banned after three issues. From 1990 to 1995 he worked as an editor for the unofficial magazine Xiandai Hanshi (Modern Chinese Poetry). He is now one of the two chief-editors of the magazine Dangdai Gouji Shitan (Contemporary World Poetry).
He has published five collections of poems to date. His series of poems Jinghua Shuiyue (Flowers in the Mirror and the Moon on the Water) was adapted into an experimental play directed by Meng Jinghui and was well accepted at the 35th Festival Internacional Cervantino, Mexico, 2007. In 2005, the Italian visual Artist Marco Mereo Rotelli made a giant installation named Poetry Island with 12 poems from 12 poets (including Adonis, Yves Bonnefoy, Charles Tomlinson, Tadeusz Rozewicz and Xi Chuan) and exhibited it at the 51st La Biennale di Venezia. The composer Guo Wenjing turned Xi Chuan’s poem ‘Yuanyou’ (Long Journey) into a piece of music and was performed in 2004 by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart.
In 1997 he edited the collected works of the poet-hero Hai Zhi, who committed suicide in 1989. He also works as a translator, mainly of poetry. In addition to African and English poetry, he has translated works by Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, Czesław Miłosz and Olav. H. Hauge into Chinese. The translations of his poems and essays appeared in American, Canadian, French, British, Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, Danish, Italian, Russian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Indian, Korean, Brazilian, Venezuelan anthologies, magazines and journals, including the London Times Literary Supplement and the Boston Review.
Xi Chuan has been awarded numerous prizes, including: in 1994, the Modern Chinese Poetry Prize; in 1999, one of the top ten winners at the Weimar International Essay Prize Contest; in 2001, the national Lu Xun Prize. A series of grants made his long visits abroad possible, in various places, including India (UNESCO-ASCHBERG bursaries of artists), the United States (Freeman Foundation fellowship), Italy (Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship), and Germany (Kulturstiftung des Bundes fellowship). He attended the 1995 Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, the 1997 Biennale Internationale des Poètes en Val-de-Marne in Paris, the 2002 Chicago Humanities Festival, USA, and the 2004 and 2008 Berlin International Literature Festival, Germany. He was the Curator for Chinese Poetry Posters Exhibition of the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair. Xi Chuan lives in Beijing.
Xi Chuan is one of the most influential poets in contemporary China. He has been well known in the Chinese literary scene since his student days. In 1988, he founded, with friends, the unofficial poetry journal Qingxiang (Tendency), which was, however, banned after three issues. From 1990 to 1995 he worked as an editor for the unofficial magazine Xiandai Hanshi (Modern Chinese Poetry). He is now one of the two chief-editors of the magazine Dangdai Gouji Shitan (Contemporary World Poetry).
He has published five collections of poems to date. His series of poems Jinghua Shuiyue (Flowers in the Mirror and the Moon on the Water) was adapted into an experimental play directed by Meng Jinghui and was well accepted at the 35th Festival Internacional Cervantino, Mexico, 2007. In 2005, the Italian visual Artist Marco Mereo Rotelli made a giant installation named Poetry Island with 12 poems from 12 poets (including Adonis, Yves Bonnefoy, Charles Tomlinson, Tadeusz Rozewicz and Xi Chuan) and exhibited it at the 51st La Biennale di Venezia. The composer Guo Wenjing turned Xi Chuan’s poem ‘Yuanyou’ (Long Journey) into a piece of music and was performed in 2004 by the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Edo de Waart.
In 1997 he edited the collected works of the poet-hero Hai Zhi, who committed suicide in 1989. He also works as a translator, mainly of poetry. In addition to African and English poetry, he has translated works by Ezra Pound, Jorge Luis Borges, Czesław Miłosz and Olav. H. Hauge into Chinese. The translations of his poems and essays appeared in American, Canadian, French, British, Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, Danish, Italian, Russian, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Indian, Korean, Brazilian, Venezuelan anthologies, magazines and journals, including the London Times Literary Supplement and the Boston Review.
Xi Chuan has been awarded numerous prizes, including: in 1994, the Modern Chinese Poetry Prize; in 1999, one of the top ten winners at the Weimar International Essay Prize Contest; in 2001, the national Lu Xun Prize. A series of grants made his long visits abroad possible, in various places, including India (UNESCO-ASCHBERG bursaries of artists), the United States (Freeman Foundation fellowship), Italy (Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship), and Germany (Kulturstiftung des Bundes fellowship). He attended the 1995 Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam, the 1997 Biennale Internationale des Poètes en Val-de-Marne in Paris, the 2002 Chicago Humanities Festival, USA, and the 2004 and 2008 Berlin International Literature Festival, Germany. He was the Curator for Chinese Poetry Posters Exhibition of the 2009 Frankfurt Book Fair. Xi Chuan lives in Beijing.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 2, 2024
Overall, I really enjoyed reading this. There are some really beautiful and provocative poetry. Xi Chuan alludes to Western and Eastern influences, other poets, political figures, etc. making it hard to understand some poems. I would read this again and would recommend it to the right people.
August 28, 2022
Wasn’t a huge fan of some of the translation choices, but I was mainly reading the Chinese so I wasn’t too bothered.
- aphorism
- reminds me of Altazor and of T.S. Eliot, but also of Samuel Beckett & language poets
- in the circularity and seeming all-rounding addressing (not critique) of meaninglessness and stable meanings, a genuine feeling of confusion and loss and instability—felt appropriate.
- the meaninglessness / nihilistic moments made the moments of frenetic joy and humor even sharper—like we’ve seen the nothing and are reduced to the feelings we have and the choice to let those be the most important takeaways.
- first full book read in Chinese! will revisit :)
- aphorism
- reminds me of Altazor and of T.S. Eliot, but also of Samuel Beckett & language poets
- in the circularity and seeming all-rounding addressing (not critique) of meaninglessness and stable meanings, a genuine feeling of confusion and loss and instability—felt appropriate.
- the meaninglessness / nihilistic moments made the moments of frenetic joy and humor even sharper—like we’ve seen the nothing and are reduced to the feelings we have and the choice to let those be the most important takeaways.
- first full book read in Chinese! will revisit :)
July 31, 2024
the poems were great but the main experience was looking at the chinese characters and realising this character correlated with this word in english, etc.
but loved how the poems often touched on modern life, on modern life in china. there is a shortage of cultural exchange between China and the US and hope that decreases as humans are humans wherever you go, and it can be hard for people to realise this to be true
one thing i do wish, and this is likely something that will never happen, is for the dual language to be pinyin and english. i wish there were more books like that
but loved how the poems often touched on modern life, on modern life in china. there is a shortage of cultural exchange between China and the US and hope that decreases as humans are humans wherever you go, and it can be hard for people to realise this to be true
one thing i do wish, and this is likely something that will never happen, is for the dual language to be pinyin and english. i wish there were more books like that
May 22, 2023
Chinese text is on the page next to the translated English text is always good -
These poems were both wandering and concise, my favs were "Bloom" and "Trying to Talk About Flying Without Cliche's"
Xi Chuan breaks up traditional poetry prose/flow with blunt, direct references to daily life - it's beautiful and grounding, he let's you float up in the sky before dragging you back down.
These poems were both wandering and concise, my favs were "Bloom" and "Trying to Talk About Flying Without Cliche's"
Xi Chuan breaks up traditional poetry prose/flow with blunt, direct references to daily life - it's beautiful and grounding, he let's you float up in the sky before dragging you back down.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews