Sidetracks by Bei Dao and translated by Jeffrey Yang

This is poetry from China.

Sidetracks by Bei Dao translated by Jeffrey Yang is published by Norton & Company Limited, W. W.. This is a Book originally written in Chinese. This was published in 2024.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780811238441E12.

Sidetracks, by Bei Dao, is a Chinese poetry collection from China, translated from Chinese by Jeffrey Yang, published by Norton & Company Limited, W. W. in 2024. It is a Chinese collection by Bei Dao, translated by Jeffrey Yang, that carries exile, memory, and digression into a sharply attentive lyric mode. The sidetrack is not a failure of direction here; it is the path a mind takes when the direct road has been broken. 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.