Mirror by Zao Zhang and translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain

This is poetry from China.

Mirror by Zao Zhang translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain is published by Zephyr Press. This is a Book originally written in Chinese. This was published in 2015.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781938890154E12.

Mirror, by Zao Zhang and translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain from Chinese, brings Chinese-language poetry from China into English through Zhang Zao’s mirror lyric, reflection, and a Chinese poetics of selfhood seen through another surface. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem starts making its own weather. I would read it for mirror, reflection, desire, and the strange intimacy of meeting oneself indirectly, not as a fixed lesson about China. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Mirror belongs in the translated poetry library because it adds a contemporary Chinese voice of elegance, inwardness, and image-driven thought.

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.