A massively single number by Lian Yang and translated by Brian Holton

This is poetry from China.

A massively single number by Lian Yang translated by Brian Holton is published by Shearsmans Books. This is a Book originally written in Chinese. This was published in 2015.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781848613768E12.

A massively single number, by Lian Yang, is a Chinese poetry collection from China, translated from Chinese by Brian Holton, published by Shearsmans Books in 2015. It is a Chinese collection by Yang Lian, translated by Brian Holton, whose title already bends abstraction into something bodily and strange. Yang Lian’s poems often feel architectonic and haunted, as though number, exile, language, and history were trying to occupy the same room. I would not approach it as a book that needs to be solved before it can begin working. Start with the title, the pressure of the translated line, and the feeling of a voice making room for itself in English. The value here is not just metadata or representation. It is the chance to let a particular book create its own weather, its own difficulty, and its own way of asking the reader to listen.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.