Song of Shadows by Xiao Hai and translated by Zhu Yu

This is poetry from China.

Song of Shadows by Xiao Hai translated by Zhu Yu is published by Restless Books. This is a Book originally written in Chinese. This was published in 2014.0 and has the ISBN of 9.78098998328E12.

Song of Shadows, by Xiao Hai, is a Chinese poetry collection from China, translated from Chinese by Zhu Yu, published by Restless Books in 2014. It is a Chinese collection by Xiao Hai, translated by Zhu Yu, that gives shadow a musical and emotional life. The title suggests a poetics of half-light, where the poem is not trying to reveal everything but to let darkness carry its own song. 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.