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Morton Marcus: Good evening, everybody. This is the Poetry Show, and I'm your host, Mort Marcus. And tonight, our music announces that the subject is China. And we are very honored to have a guest who should have been here a long time ago and

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that is Jim Wilson, a translator for Chinese poetry who has been at UCSC for how many years has it been, Jim? James A. Wilson: It's been almost seven now. Morton Marcus: Uh huh.

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James A. Wilson: This is my last quarter. Morton Marcus: And when you say it's your last quarter, you really mean it's your last quarter. Tell us, first of all, something about yourself. Where are you from?

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James A. Wilson: Well, I was born in Oregon, raised in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada, but really in Fresno, California, and the Central Valley, studied with Philip Levine in the 70s, "Poetry in Translation," and then went to Berkeley from '77

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to '82 when I moved down here to Santa Cruz. So I've been at UCSC since 1985. Morton Marcus: Were you a poet to begin with? James A. Wilson: So people tell me, that's how I started out. I

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found translation actually, after I'd been writing myself for quite a while. Morton Marcus: And did you get your first degrees at Fresno State?

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James A. Wilson: Right, I got a B.A. present. Morton Marcus: And now you've been here at UC and you've got a PhD from USC. James A. Wilson: No, my doctorate's from Berkeley.

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Morton Marcus: Oh. James A. Wilson: In Comparative Literature. Morton Marcus: And so then your your first job, so to speak, was on the tenure track, as they say. Was that up here in- at

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University of California? James A. Wilson: Not quite, but close enough. Morton Marcus: Okay. And what have you been teaching up at UC? James A. Wilson: I've been teaching in the writing program,

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I've been teaching in the Stevenson College multicultural year long interdisciplinary core course. I've been teaching literary modernism, both British and American, for the literature board, and had my hand in founding the Translation Center

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at UCSC, which is now in its third and well, let's hope not final year, but both Gabriel Burns and I are leaving after this year. Morton Marcus: That's, too bad. Gabe has been a great asset and

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so have you to the, as they say, local scene. How did you actually get into poetry? And you said you took Levine's classes, but I mean, what was it that finally almost turned you into what we would call a full-time translator, and

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yourself to no longer refer to yourself as a poet? James A. Wilson: Well, I suppose one of- the bridge for me in a lot of ways between different times, between different languages, between different sensibilities was Ezra Pound.

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Pound as a poet, and his sense of rhythm as well as his interest in other cultures and languages, kept my ear sharp, I think initially. And when I found that I had some aptitude and interest in languages, he helped to push me in certain

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directions. And when I got to Berkeley, what I was going to say, after, after a few years, really listening to the water and studying Chinese first in the Sierra Nevada, I went to Berkeley and then studied formally under Edward Schaefer,

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who just died recently, but who was also a teacher of Gary Snyder at Berkeley. And it was under those conditions that I began to translate first as a graduate student. And I suppose in the last three years, I've done a lot more translation than

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I have writing my own work, because partly under the direction that Gabriel Burns allowed with the fostering of translation at UCSC. But since then, I've been involved with the National Endowment for the Humanities Grants and so forth.

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But China has always been there as a source of inspiration, both because of its philosophy but also because of the poetry. And I think anyone growing up in the United States post World War II, but certainly post 1960s, knows how much the Chinese tradition

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has influenced American poetry from W.S. Merwin to Gary Snyder, certainly before that, Kenneth Rexroth, people like Carolyn Kizer and so forth. So the Chinese sensibility has been brought over in the 20th century, and particularly to

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American poets of the 20th century is something that's an ongoing interest. Morton Marcus: How many years did you study Chinese formally? James A. Wilson: I had four years of classical and three

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years of spoken at Berkeley. Since then I've tried to do the best I can to continue studying it, but I realized one day in the Oriental Languages Library at Berkeley, when I asked Ed Schaefer about a particular character, and this gentleman

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had been studying for forty years, he took a look at it and said, "I'll be right back." In other words, he knew but he wanted to double check his sources and I realized at that point that one never becomes an expert in classical Chinese

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poetry unless one was born into the tradition. So I've been an amateur or a lover of the poetry ever since. And I've tried to keep keep my knowledge of the classical tradition alive on my own, which is a little hard to do sometimes.

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Morton Marcus: My professor told me that there is nobody who really knows even a great deal of the Chinese language as far as characters and vocabulary is concerned. And he'd sort of shake his head. And he was one of the great philosophers;

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modern philosophers of China are certainly scholars. And he just felt that he had not even the right to talk about poetry. And I found that very, very interesting. I didn't agree with him at all.

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James A. Wilson: Right, one can agree with that on one level, but on the other hand, there are a lot of people in the United States now, certainly more than twenty, thirty years ago, and a great number here in Santa Cruz, who have an interest in Chinese

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poetry, even if they only have a little bit of studying, who can work through cribs, who have a sense of what the original language might have been trying to do. And so I respect people at whatever level they can bring, whatever interest they

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have. Morton Marcus: Now, I want to go into the poetry within the next several minutes. But what period, if there is a period, or certainly what poet or poets are you most concerned with

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translating? James A. Wilson: I've been mostly concerned with translating the poets of the Tang Dynasty. I think there are two great classical periods, the Tang and Song Dynasty. And for

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the Tang Dynasty, we're talking roughly 608 to 907, those three centuries of tremendous literary and cultural and philosophical synthesis and exuberance. And it's really unlike any other renaissance that the world has known, partly because of its

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geographical and military proximity and conquest. But that was probably one of the high points of- in terms of poetry in China. And that's been pretty much agreed upon by scholars and poets over the last couple hundred years.

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Morton Marcus: It's been called with typical Western chauvinism, the Elizabethan Age in China. James A. Wilson: Well, that's fine. That's close enough, yeah. It was a great period.

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Morton Marcus: And then you mentioned the Song. James A. Wilson: Well, the Song Dynasty, about a few hundred years later, is something that I think Kenneth Rexroth has understood and written about as well as anybody else. And a lot

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of the poets that he translated came from the Song Dynasty. It was a poet- period of Confucian and Taoist synthesis. And I think that was something that really interested him, the way that Zen influenced the artists of that period. Zen was just

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getting its start in the Tang Dynasty. Morton Marcus: My favorite poet is from the Song, and that is Su Dongpo. James A. Wilson: Right.

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Morton Marcus: And he is the synthesis of Confucian responsibility and Taoist mysticism. And a very wonderful biography was written of him, romanticized but still wonderful, by Lin Yutang. He was the gay genius.

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James A. Wilson: I think so, you're right. Morton Marcus: A wonderful, wonderful book, which I suggest anyone out there can find it anyway. But let us, do you want to do this chronologically?

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James A. Wilson: We can if you prefer. Morton Marcus: To start wherever you want. We can go backwards or forwards. Let's hear some of your translations. James A. Wilson: Okay, we'll start- I'll start with the Tang

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Dynasty. And I'll start with Meng Jiao, who might be the prototype of the poet who tried to synthesize two different traditions -- the Confucian tradition on the one hand and the Taoist tradition on the other. And he stands out as

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somewhat of an eccentric character within the tradition because the Chinese find him a little bit odd. He has too many angles and his voice is a little too rough. And he recalls with too much brutal honesty, tries to recall and restore a past

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which clearly is no longer tenable in his own time. And by doing so he ran the risk of alienating himself from readership, but in retrospect clearly allowed his own time and now us to understand what the limitations of his age were.

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Morton Marcus: If I- James A. Wilson: Go ahead. Morton Marcus: No, that's okay. James A. Wilson: Well, I was going to start first if I could

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with the poem that I wrote, which is very short called: ON TRANSLATION, and it concerns my working with Meng Jiao. How build the house when the walls are wind? How learn the mind when the words turn to water? I pick up volume eleven

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of the Tran Tong Shi, the complete Tang poems, reprint 1979, Beijing. And under the fluorescent lights of my carpeted office read through Meng Jiao. I listened for the Wu Tung loot. I grew up for cold bones, knifing through woods and

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creek, or imprinting a mat. I follow his dreams into China's first words, messages from exile. Nothing sounds familiar as we are lured far away home, believing we might stay here too, believing we might stay here, too.

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Morton Marcus: Now that is mostly your poem. James A. Wilson: That's my poem. Morton Marcus: Yeah, very nice, very nice. James A. Wilson: But Meng Jiao is really concerned with trying

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to restore vocabulary as well as sensibility. And in the poem that I'd like to read, which has nine parts, a poem called, "Cold Creek," he really is trying to call into question the notion of, I think, two things: one, that nature is not as the

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Taoists would have it an amoral situation for us, that in fact nature can be cruel, and that cruelty and suffering is in fact part of the universal condition and something that we have to try to overcome through social answers as well as through

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literary responses; and the second point that he's trying to do or bring to our attention is using some of the old vocabulary, the vocabulary of the early Shaman poets, say of the second century BC, in asserting a kind of bio-ethical,

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priest-like vocabulary. But let me just read through the nine poems and I'll pause briefly between each part: The frost exhausts, the water's blue, used up, Cold Creek shows a splintered scales. Bow to inspect its mirror, fake,

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reflecting disk, body beat and broken. It slides away but can't hide itself, bed exposed, rocks always glossy. Opened up a generous friend, but its currents can close on the trustfull. Witness in full its mind ignominious, iced at night,

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tricky forwards at dawn. It purifies here, jade held in the hand, flying far off, its particles pollute. Know from the first that a stream, step muddied, knows no one exiled from mountain springs. From Lo Yang, follow the shore to the

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monk clan, town facing the creek, boats rock, white ice cracks, as if cut by corners of clear stone. The green stream congeals to jade, pale waves raised into marbled tips, the whiteness brightens in this rare mirror. The sky vague to the

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living, in steep descent, through tricky twists, grab wood, rotten, hear birds with dead mates, the fragrance of frost thins out, is gone, freezing, vague and numb, sitting I listen dumbly, stumbling I lose a shoe, the

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bank thick, tangled with brambles, my speech exceeds grief. At dawn get drunk, the whole bottle, cross the snow, come to Clear Creek. The flow of waves has iced to knives, teal cut up, mallard carved open. Feathers once folded, slashed,

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cast aside, blood herds soaking sand and mud. I want to say what? Brewed in secret, heart in its acids. Frozen blood? Not for spring, with blood and spring birth couldn't be vague. Frozen blood? Not for blossoms. With blood and blossoms, mate-less

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birds might lament. Hidden in hills, this village thorn-dense, frozen, inanimate, impossible to plow. The boat polar knocks off jade stars, his whole road floating with fireflies fallen. The new moon freezes, grief sinks to the depths. Hunters

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starved sing for putrid fish. Iced teeth grind together, wind tones sour through chimes, harsh as sorrow, can't be ignored, engulfing faint delicate sounds. Emerald ripples finished, rolled up. Iridescent silks? Fragments flown whirling, stepping down,

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slick, unsettled, perching above breakage, little rest. Grunts, squawks, cacophonous, looks that accuse, how long do we take it? [Commentary] He's talking of course about the creatures and as allegorical of our condition too.

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Bend after bend, then rapids, white dragons, scales rippling, frozen whirlwind, fractured cries, souring tones, ravines embittered, notebooks and pads unravel, words weaken, yet the winged are walking increase their grace. The mad bow, its

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one string broken, eases all beasts, impels them to respect. Great dignity set up here, keep small killings from occurring again. Purity, brilliance, such radiant white, cosmos be constant, open birth and breath. A fine sky, sun and moon brushed

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in. In deep blue stars, planets break through. I stand alone, feet in snow, intoning to no one, doubts beyond counting. The comet of slander blazes in vain. The tongue constellation flaps its gums. Yeah, I was a sage and did not attend you. Confucius

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was humble and still had subjects. My remonstrations come roughly to an end, the old notes don't easily hold. That's the central part of the nine. PART SIX

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Because of the cold, one could eat what's dead. The killing wind still persists. If weapons were made with propriety and grace, propriety and grace would grow on a blade, on a blade both would rot. A generous friend makes no such mistake. But the

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waves dry out daggers of ice knifing each other, endless rivals. Jagged snow pierces hearts of fish, hideous blush brightened with blood, convulsed, their ghosts accuse. Motives are wounds. How did the vapor of some strange place flow

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here to this exact spot? Cut off a month of spring, blocked up, a hundred gullies choked. Face lifted, I look for clear skies, shine down, illumine my doubts. The creek Horry weeps bitter cold, tears floating ice into brittle charms- brittle chimes.

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The flying dead, the walking dead take shape. Snow explodes, disorders heart and liver, soared edge, frozen, blunted, bolstering impossibly stiff. You've heard before a generous friend firm, won't even eat what the heavens have killed. Carving

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off jade I cover their carcasses, mourn with red stones, tears from eye sockets. Wind on the creek loosens ice that's left. Brightness in the creek holds promise of spring. Jade warms, flowers drop dew, dragons unknot, making scales

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glisten. With anxious steps I descend to clear bends, while they thaw I wash at the perfumed ford. For a thousand miles ice cracks in all places. Each spoonful of water softened and graced, each creature's ghost unfrozen, purified slowly. Small

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ripples start, waves nearly renewed. Almost at once, sword wounds vanish. Now rise, bodies from a hundred wars. Morton Marcus: That is gorgeous, James. And I see you're reading from the New Orleans Review. And when did that come out?

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James A. Wilson: This came out in winter 1990. Morton Marcus: Have you had any response from it? From anybody? James A. Wilson: No, not at all. I would like to hope that it's because of winter 1990 came out about only three or four months

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ago, but even so. Morton Marcus: It's marvelous. And in fact, I don't want you to put it away yet because I want to talk to you about it. James A. Wilson: Alright.

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Morton Marcus: The problem of translating from other languages is acute anyway. We always miss the sound of the language; that goes immediately. What some of us try to attain is meaning, imagery, just to follow the ideas as they fall in some kind

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of order. But it seems to me in this poem, you try to do much, much more than that. It seems to me that you've really tried to approximate the sounds of the language. And what I want to ask you is, was this in making it a poem in English -- which was

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what Pound would always say would be fine -- or was this actually bringing over into English alliterative sounds that you heard going on in the classical Chinese? And alliteration is very, very strong in this poem, and I use

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that and what sounds to me like four beats to a line, maybe impersonating four characters, five character lines? James A. Wilson: That's a good guess. And I think you heard a lot of things that are in fact in there. If you if you take a

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look at the page, you can see that I've- it might look a little strange on the page to someone coming to Chinese poetry because I put it into couplets. On the other hand, the couplets- and let's see, the first poem of the nine has, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6,

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7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 couplets. Well, the Chinese poem has fourteen lines. So what I've done in coming up with a couplet is really not all that different from what the Chinese line does, anyway, and a five character Chinese line of this kind of

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poem, you have a caesura always after the first two characters. Therefore, the line breaks naturally into two parts. And within those two parts of the line as well as within other lines of the poem one finds, in fact, the kind of alliteration,

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the kind of roughness that you mentioned. And as much as possible without holding to the end rhyme scheme of the poem, which is simply impossible for me, maybe somebody else can do it. I've tried to keep the structural tensions alive in a

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contemporary poem, but also work with an analogous music, an analogous alliteration, an analogous internal rhyme, and so forth. It's not systematic by any means. In other words, I can't- I can go back and look at the Tang Dynasty pronunciation

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of each line, but it won't match up, exactly equivalent with what I've done line for line. Morton Marcus: Well, let me ask you something impossible: did you happen to bring the original?

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James A. Wilson: I didn't bring the original of that but I might give you an example of just two lines from a four-line poem by Wang Wei. Morton Marcus: Okay.

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James A. Wilson: This is something that's real accessible to everybody for a number of reasons: it's a thin volume, it's inexpensive, and it is in fact what it says: It's nineteen different translations, mostly of the 20th century, mostly in

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English, of a twenty character or four line poem by Wang Wei. The title of it is called, "Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei." And the first two lines in modern day Chinese would sound like this:

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[Speaking Modern Chinese] But it sounds a little different in classical Chinese: [Speaking Traditional Chinese] Now until you can really hear it properly, which no one can do

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now, I can't- my teachers can't with any assurity, probably the Chinese scholars themselves can't because we've lost twelve centuries. On the other hand, there's a kind of internal rhyme on nine of the first ten characters. Now how is one to,

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in addition to end rhyme, so you've got a- [cut-off]. Morton Marcus: That tells me that we've been doing half an hour. I just thought we were five minutes so far. So we are going to take our usual but this time, very short break, we're

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going to get back to Paul Han walking through Shanghai, wherever he is, and then we will be back within less than five minutes. So if you have to go out and get a Coke or something like that, run through the refrigerator, but we're going to

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be- James A. Wilson: Alright and I might tell viewers that- Morton Marcus: Listeners. James A. Wilson: Listeners, right -- I've just changed

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medium -- that I'll be reading from the poems of Bei Dao, who's a contemporary Chinese poet in exile in Norway, born 1949. So we'll make a real historical shift in just a few minutes. Morton Marcus: Okay, we will be right back everybody.

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Hello again, this is Mort Marcus and I want to tell you what I tell you about every night, Tuesday night at this time and that is Selected Shorts, the acclaimed performance series of short stories continues during April and concludes at the end

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of May. Symphony Space in New York City serves as the stage for these exciting pairings of celebrated actors reading works by world famous authors, the result is a magical hour of spoken word entertainment. On April 10th, tomorrow night at

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9pm, "The Distance of the Moon," by Italo Calvino read by Maria Tucci. And, "Dreams Begin Responsibilities," by Delmore Schwartz, we have a wonderful reading by David Margulies. Well, certainly if you've never heard of Calvino's story you

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should. And, "Dreams Begin Responsibilities," one of the really important short stories of my early years by the poet Delmore Schwartz, who alas died in early age. Our one local announcement is for Vern Rutsala, award winning poet, who

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will read at Cabrillo College this Monday evening at 8pm at the Cabrillo College Fireside Lounge, located in the Student Center in Building 900, the reading is free. Rutsala's poems have appeared in over four hundred publications such as the

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American Poetry Review, The Atlantic, Harpers, The New Yorker Paris Review, Times Literary Supplement, Yale Reviews, [unidentified], you name it, he's been there. A lot of anthologies, he has seven books out, this reading tour of

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his celebrates his Selected Poems. And I have a review of those Selected Poems in the Metro Newspaper, which will be out all over Santa Cruz and the San Jose area tomorrow. So take a look at that, he is really I think one of our finest poets,

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who has gone relatively undiscovered, but I hope will win a big award. He has already won Guggenheim Fellowships, Pushcart Prizes, and several National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and this year was an Oregon Master Artist; he

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received $10,000 from the Oregon government, state government. So he really is a wonderful poet. He writes about the everyday world in tremendously terse, evocative language and wonderful imagery. So that's Vern Rutsala, this Monday at Cabrillo at 8pm

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and that is at the Fireside Lounge. So come on, this is really a fine poet. Okay, we are here talking to Jim Wilson, who is just read us some Meng Jiao poems from Tang dynasty and is now going to read

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us some Bei Dao poems. You know, I did not realize he was an exile now, was this over the Tiananmen Square situation? James A. Wilson: Right, Bei Dao was born in 1949 and he was instrumental at- Early on, from 1979, he was one of the

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originators of what might be called "Mist" poetry, which was more allegorical and explicit in its criticism of the government. But in the mid 80s, the democracy movements, he was instrumental enough so that he was arrested and he really had

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to leave- at some point had to leave China before the Tiananmen incident. So he was already, before Tiananmen in June 1989, he was a spokesperson for the democracy movement. Morton Marcus: And where is he now did you say?

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James A. Wilson: As far as I know, he is in Norway, in exile in Norway with another of his translators, I think Bonnie McDougal. Morton Marcus: Yes, do read him. Were you a teacher of or had

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anything to do with Tony Barnstone? James A. Wilson: Tony and I met partly because his father- Morton Marcus: Willis, yeah. James A. Wilson: He was out here for one of the National

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Endowment for the Humanities Literary Translation Institutes, I think in 1987 and we've since hooked up. And I hope that Tony will have a book coming out as an editor, and I'll have several poems in that. We're hopeful that it can come out sometime

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next year. Morton Marcus: Great. James A. Wilson: This will be a collection of contemporary Chinese poets.

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Morton Marcus: Wonderful. Please read. James A. Wilson: I'm going to read, I'd like to read six poems by Bei Dao, three of which are in the most recent Citylights Review. I think that will take us close to the hour, but we'll

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allow some time and maybe, if time allows, we can talk a little bit about some of the problems of translation and perhaps I could share with your listeners the particular difficulties that I have encountered as recently as

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today, in moving from a crib -- or that is a word for character -- understanding of the Chinese poem into a rendering into contemporary English. But Bei Dao, I think will offer a different voice. Meng Jiao was very much in the elegiac or

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tragic mode of poets, very rarely did Meng Jiao write about anything that was especially uplifting. And in our contemporary age, that voice, sustained as long as it does, might strike some listeners as difficult. It's not something

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we're used to, it's not something that we encourage or- we don't really have, I think, maybe since Yeats, we have other poets, but Yeats perhaps was the greatest early 20th century poet of that voice. Bei Dao is very- is a poet of the streets but

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he's also concerned that the classical tradition of China's literary heritage has really been wiped out by the totalitarian government -- ever since Mao in 1949 -- precisely because the imaginative excess and the imaginative

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possibilities of that great tradition, in fact, allowed for people to be creative in ways that any totalitarian state is not going to allow if it can. The first poem that I'd like to read is called "Ancient Monastery," and I choose it

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because it gives some indication of what is lost for Bei Dao, but yet what might be restored and brought back into the present age. With bell sounds gone, the spider webs build in the cracks

00:34:28.480 - 00:34:45.790

of pillars weaving, wrapping around the same rings with each year, turning, nothing to remember, stones. Empty mist and mountain valleys we use with the echoes of stones, nothing to remember. When narrow trails wound through this weaving,

00:34:45.910 - 00:35:03.040

dragons and weird birds would make their ways along the temple eves, bearing the silence of bells. Wild grass in a year's time flourishes indiscriminately with no concern for bending beneath, amongst cloth shoe, or the wind. Stone relics are worn

00:35:03.040 - 00:35:16.330

and pocked, their writings long-ruined, as when great flames ravaged the center of open fields. If a hand could make out the meaning, then perhaps in catching a glance from the living the tortoise might stir again in the earth,

00:35:16.690 - 00:35:43.520

muddy with dark and holy secrets, crawling to the threshold. The same theme can be heard in this poem called, "The Way Back," once again, that which is long gone. In fact, those are a

00:35:43.520 - 00:36:03.440

couple of words I've used here, is something that that if we try to restore, might have to come to terms with other more contemporary problems. Steam whistles endlessly blast, and you hope to count crows on

00:36:03.440 - 00:36:20.900

the Wutong trees, secretly keeping them in mind, as if with such minute signs you'd never get lost in another dream. Weathered leaves and reddened buds bend upon the bushes, though without any wind. The frost yet hidden at daybreak,

00:36:21.020 - 00:36:39.800

fades on train windows, your pale drained face remains. It's true, you simply don't care. You still want to take the way back. The bamboo flutes of days long gone in lands where they lay waste have since grown into enormous forests, noted the

00:36:39.800 - 00:37:01.710

roads, scoured the skies. This is a very brief and early poem and I wanted to read it because sometimes Bei Dao's early work can be- he is not given the credit that he deserves. They're often referred

00:37:01.710 - 00:37:18.420

to as sort of juvenilia, as adolescent poems, excessively sentimental and so forth. But we have to remember that at the time that he was writing, in this case the early 70s, he had to be very careful in his allegory and his reference to

00:37:18.420 - 00:37:34.890

the political realities at the time. So I think you'll hear in a line such as, "The wreckage of dreams," that wreckage is chosen precisely because of its connotation of the wrecking ball that can work against buildings as well as against hearts and

00:37:34.890 - 00:37:48.650

minds. It's called: SWEET TANGERINES, don't be misled by the sweetness. Sweet tangerines flooded with sun, sweet tangerines. Let me move through your hearts bearing burdens of love, sweet

00:37:48.650 - 00:38:05.780

tangerines, rinds breaking with delicate rains. Let me move through your hearts, worries turned to tears of relief. Sweet tangerines, bitter nets keep each fleshy piece, let me move through your hearts as I wander in the wreckage of dreams. Sweet

00:38:05.780 - 00:38:25.320

tangerines, flooded with sun, sweet tangerines. The last three poems that I'd like to read of his are probably his most stridently political. Not surprisingly, I think, not surprisingly, they're the three poems that Citylights Review

00:38:25.320 - 00:38:42.180

took. But I think contemporary China for Bei Dao is heard most strongly in these three poems. The first is called: NIGHTMARE On the unpredictable winds, I painted an eye, the moment

00:38:42.180 - 00:38:56.970

frozen then gone, but no one woke up. The nightmare kept right on into the light of day, flooding through stream beds, crawling across cobblestones, increasing in presence and pressure among branches, along the eaves. The birds' terrified

00:38:56.970 - 00:39:17.970

eyes froze, fell out over cart tracks and the roads across the frost formed. No one woke up. This poem is called, "A Formal Declaration," and was one of those poems that got Bei Dao in trouble. Perhaps for the last

00:39:17.970 - 00:39:34.980

time, I don't know if this was the one that made his exile sure or permanent, but if this didn't, it probably should have. A FORMAL DECLARATION Maybe these are the last days. I haven't put aside a will, just a

00:39:34.980 - 00:39:53.490

pen for my mother. I'm hardly a hero. In times with no heroes, I'll just be a man. The calm horizon divides the ranks of living and dead. I align myself with the sky, no way can I kneel to state assassins who lock up the winds. The star holes of

00:39:53.490 - 00:40:11.800

bullets bleed in the black bright dawn. Morton Marcus: Yep. James A. Wilson: And the last poem is called, "Following Thoughts," and I think it's one of his greatest poems. And

00:40:12.370 - 00:40:27.070

you'll have- even though you're listening, you have a little of trouble in the lines or if it sounds as if the line that I have just read goes with the previous line, and or the next line, both is probably correct. In other words, one of the

00:40:27.070 - 00:40:41.980

subtle things he does, despite relatively straightforward and colloquial language, is create an atmosphere as well as an ambiguity of past and present, and that comes across in reading a line that you realize it goes both with the previous line as

00:40:41.980 - 00:40:55.900

well as with the next line, often offering multiple suggestions within that kind of ambiguity. And as a result most of his poems, but this one in particular, I don't punctuate at all.

00:40:57.600 - 00:41:13.360

FOLLOWING THOUGHTS Twilight rises from the terrorist torches, on the islands of frontier rivers, a tribe once settled, and spread, the earth turned colors, holy words, wasting away under rags,

00:41:13.900 - 00:41:30.010

a dreamy pregnancy bearing arrows to poison and rupture time. Bitter convulsions, trumpets fell silent, corpses moved about at night through the flood of their spouses' unstoppable tears, white screens opened out and covered the exits

00:41:30.100 - 00:41:47.170

to places far off. To the east, that speck of amber lay a glimpse of green shoreline, wreathes thick and stricken by the black bright dawn. Fishermen abandoned their boats leaving like steam, history broke loose from the shore, bulldozed huge

00:41:47.170 - 00:42:05.110

wounds through the bamboo groves, and on surviving scraps wrote down only a few words. In a vault, a row of long burning lamps witnessed the death of bronze and gold. Different kinds of death remain, the death of wheat, thin crashing and crossed

00:42:05.110 - 00:42:22.180

swords, grains once waged war like the flourishing earth, outshone the sun's light, hot ashes lasting through winter. Cartwheels dropped off, pursuing the path of broken spokes. Pawns buried under sandstorms, and still another kind of death,

00:42:22.480 - 00:42:41.080

gravestones swaddled in soft, silky moss like lanterns smothered or snuffed. Yet one road stays open. That road caught engraved in the world's first contours, carved across the vistas of death right to my feet, the dust kicked up. Above

00:42:41.080 - 00:42:57.490

the crumbling forts, puffs of gun smoke hung in the air. I was moulded long ago, from frozen cast iron, waiting to step forth, to shout down the sound of thunder, to call our dead out from the howling storms and let a billion souls below us burgeon

00:42:57.490 - 00:43:15.940

into one huge solitary tree enough to shade us to make us taste its bitter fruit now as the seasons break loose. Morton Marcus: [Unintelligible] Plenty of time. Apparently you don't have any of the originals, do you that you could-

00:43:17.200 - 00:43:27.290

James A. Wilson: I didn't bring the originals of the Bei Dao poems. Morton Marcus: Okay, now, we were talking during the break about- talking about some difficulties that one just

00:43:27.290 - 00:43:47.740

naturally has with translating poetry which may be, I think, much more acute in trying to translate Chinese poetry which is so different from Western language, etc. James A. Wilson: Okay, let me just give two examples. Meng

00:43:47.740 - 00:44:06.220

Jiao offers some of the easiest examples. The first will be from a poem that I read earlier, "Cold Creek." And just to give your reader some indication, coming across six lines, you might- each with five characters- one's notes might

00:44:06.220 - 00:44:19.660

have something like: "Writing tablet, notebook, stammer without strength, flying, walking, more reciprocal, humaneness, fierce bow, one breaks string, remainder pant, wrangle come

00:44:19.690 - 00:44:38.050

guest, great stern here, the possessive, established small killing, not again, arrange or spread out." One obviously has to know the context of those characters, but also know what humaneness means within the Chinese literary

00:44:38.050 - 00:44:55.540

tradition, [unidentified] or two human beings able to talk to one another with some sort of compassion. And one has to know what flying and walking refer to. And to some extent, the lines that I've given don't really bring that across but

00:44:56.110 - 00:45:04.690

this is what I ended up with: "Notebooks and pads unravel, words weaken," that's for, "Writing tablet notebook stammer without strength." Again:

00:45:04.870 - 00:45:21.580

"Notebooks and pads unravel, words weaken yet the winged or walking increase their grace. The mad bow, its one string broken, eases all beasts, impels them to respect. Great dignity set up here keeps small killings from occurring again."

00:45:21.990 - 00:45:40.500

So if the kind of moral rectitude can be established again, in society and in people's hearts, then perhaps in nature as well as within the realm of human beings, the universe can be set back into place. Another example might be,

00:45:41.370 - 00:45:50.950

this is from Meng Jiao again, "Autumn Meditation," fifteen poems, and I've been working on this- Morton Marcus: And this what you're doing now? James A. Wilson: I'm working on this now, a series of fifteen

00:45:50.950 - 00:46:10.600

poems. And I'll just read a few of my notes and so you can hear that: "Lonely bones, evening difficulty rest, singing the songs of autumn, the insects to them, that is the bones, chirp

00:46:10.600 - 00:46:24.730

chirp with the noise of a crowd." That doesn't help a whole lot. It helps a little bit if you know that lonely doesn't just mean lonely, but can mean fatherless or without the possibility of progeny, having

00:46:24.730 - 00:46:40.000

no clan, being old, and so forth. So I've- those two lines I've rendered into couplets: "An old man's bones can't rest at night, the insects drone against his silence."

00:46:45.220 - 00:47:05.470

There's another- let's see, I was having a lot of trouble trying to decide how to end the last two lines of the poem. It has- he's been talking about how can you possibly endure to follow a south sail, that is to follow the sails of ships that

00:47:05.470 - 00:47:22.000

might be going south, the south typically towards towards a warmer climate, towards an easier life and so forth. But as we know, from the beginning, his bones are old, he's an old man, his life has ended. And then it has- so the lines read:

00:47:22.030 - 00:47:35.410

"How endure to follow a south sail, rivers, mountains to trample ancient times," or something like that. Well, does it mean that the rivers and the mountains are trampling the ancient times? Does it mean he is trampling

00:47:35.410 - 00:47:55.480

through those mountains? Even though the poetry gives us the syntax, it still doesn't clear up all the ambiguities. And so my working translation for those lines now is: "How could I go after sails towards the south, past rivers

00:47:55.480 - 00:48:14.680

and mountains, that hiking is now done?" And I'm not sure. I mean, hiking in a sense sounds too colloquial, maybe not formal enough. And yet, that's where it rests right now. But I suppose in one's own head, more so than

00:48:14.680 - 00:48:28.650

on paper, the translation goes through dozens of variables before one decides, with some resignation, upon the finished product. Morton Marcus: Dylan Thomas says, you never finish a poem,

00:48:28.650 - 00:48:48.590

you abandon it. Well, we still have two or three more minutes, Jim. Do you have anything else to read us? James A. Wilson: Well, I have a couple of different poems also by Bei Dao, but poems that I translated within the last year.

00:48:49.010 - 00:49:07.880

I translated about the first ten or a dozen or so after, in fact, the summer of 1989, after the Tiananmen massacre. I really felt moved to- I felt alienated in some ways, having done a lot of study of classical Chinese poetry, knowing the philosophy,

00:49:08.300 - 00:49:23.240

having translated a couple of years before that Meng Jiao, but feeling that I wasn't connected with the present age, with the present generation of Chinese poets. And therefore, I wrote to most of- did most of my translations of Bei Dao at that

00:49:23.240 - 00:49:36.530

time. Since then, however, I've come across some of his other things and this will offer- this is a slightly different voice, neither political nor apolitical but- [squeaking sound] Here it goes, "Bodhisattva" [squeaking sound]. We have another minute

00:49:36.530 - 00:49:43.280

or so? Morton? Morton Marcus: I'm trying to think what's happened there, okay. James A. Wilson: Are we still on?

00:49:43.430 - 00:49:49.600

Morton Marcus: Yes, we're still on all right. James A. Wilson: BODHISATTVA Morton Marcus: Okay. James A. Wilson: The light robe lifts from your slight breaths,

00:49:50.020 - 00:50:05.710

on the palms of your ominous thousand arms an eye stares out, the stillness filled with friction. All living things linked together forever as our dreams. Starving calmly for hundreds of years, the pearl fixed in your forehead serves as

00:50:05.710 - 00:50:21.940

the sea's unequaled dominion, a pebble turned transparent as is water. Indefinite in sex, your half-naked breasts swell out, with only the hint of a mother's full hope to nurture the world's bitter needs, to make them increase.

00:50:23.620 - 00:50:38.380

And I like that final ambiguity and what is the role, what's the function of Buddhism in the contemporary age, at least in a country like China, for Bei Dao? Morton Marcus: Well, it's been not only a long time coming but

00:50:38.380 - 00:50:53.800

it's gone too fast. And I'm sure that you could spend much more time reading poems and talking to us about it. When are you actually leaving, Jim? I know that, although I've alluded to it, you've not told the people out there that actually this is

00:50:53.800 - 00:51:07.440

your last semester or term, quarter, at UCSC. And where are you going to from here? James A. Wilson: I'm going to be taking a position at Providence College in Providence, Rhode Island. And I suppose I'll move

00:51:07.440 - 00:51:17.170

as soon as my house sells, so anytime between June and August I'll be off. Morton Marcus: We may well have you back here and- James A. Wilson: Well, I want to thank you for having me on. I

00:51:17.170 - 00:51:31.100

appreciate it. And I hope that I can encourage you listeners out there to keep reading poetry, to keep reading Chinese poetry, and perhaps take a stab at it themselves. Morton Marcus: I want to announce in this context that

00:51:31.460 - 00:51:45.850

there will be, and are you still looking for people to take part in this extraordinary translator's workshop that will occur on the 21st of- May the 20th and the 21st of May? James A. Wilson: Right, one of those two days. And absolutely,

00:51:47.050 - 00:52:06.190

W.S. Merwin will be here for those two days, he will be leading a small group, a seminar group of twelve to fifteen people. He'll be taking a look at translations, commenting on them, and really, it's an excellent opportunity for anyone

00:52:06.190 - 00:52:24.280

out there who does translations from whatever language, and the can submit two or three poems two or three pages to m directly at Stevenson Colleg UCSC. Or they can write t Maggie Collins, who's th coordinator, conferenc

00:52:24.280 - 00:52:36.240

coordinator at UCSC in th humanities division, so encourage people to do that Morton Marcus: Well, walking around behind us waiting to take I guess Mr. Blood's place is N te Mackey, he may be one of tho

00:52:36.240 - 00:52:52.260

e people. We've had a dis inguished poet walking beh nd us here, get on the air. Wel , this is Mort Marcus and we'v been talking tonight to Ji Wilson. Please, if you're s interested, send him some o your translations or ver

00:52:52.260 - 00:53:06.720

ions from another language. I'd like to remind you that Vern Ru sala, the award winning poet, will be reading at Cabrillo Coll ge at 8pm this Monday night in t e Fireside Lounge in celebrat on of his Selected Poems. S ay tuned now for "Out Front,

00:53:06.930 - 00:53:15.420

utback," or something like that with tonight's host, Nate Macke . This is Mort Marcus saying hat Joe Stroud will see you n xt week.