Push Open the Window

Qingping Wang, ed.

Forty-nine of China’s finest contemporary poets are represented in this luminous bilingual anthology, produced as part of the National Endowment for the Arts’s International Literary Exchanges. Profoundly influenced by the Cultural Revolution, the poets’ work reflects the turmoil of that time—from the blunt and sharply focused political work of Bai Hua and Yu Jian to the hermetic images and landscapes of the Misty poets.

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ISBN: 9781556593307

Format: Paperback

Ode to Skin

Xi Chuan, trans. Lucas Klein

The creases of the pillow press into the skin. The claws of the insect leave
their mark on the skin. Acupressure cupping glasses cup up blood spots
from beneath the skin. Poisonous blood spots.

Skin. My silent surface. This skin of mine that has never been subjected
to cruel punishment, fantasizing about cruel punishment, has entered
history, has grown forth silent crops: this fine body hair of mine with
no sense of history.

A landscape painting on the skin. A map tattooed on the skin. A Nazi
human skin lampshade. A dust jacket from Chaucerian England crafted
from the skin of a young girl’s breasts.

A sofa, with cow’s skin for its own skin, does not contain the soul of that
dead animal. Every time I arise from a leather sofa, I can’t help but moo
three times.

Her skin met with a flower: Courtesan Yang Guifei. Her skin met with
ice: Consort Wang Zhaojun. All that skin that I will never meet with,
that I’m only just talking about.

But when I focus on the skin concealing my veins, I can see as well your
skin cooling in the summertime. But I would also like to see your bones.

Shameless bones, bound in pristine skin, what kind of skin will it meet
with to instantly make it as shameless as bone? Only cheeks understand
what it is to be shy and awkward.

The grain of skin beneath a microscope. The pallor of the skin in the
dressing mirror. Pocks, moles, warts, goose bumps. Skin expresses fate
only to those who know how to read fate.

My skin bears my disease, my happiness, and my gloom. My gloom can-
not be brightened by lamplight.

The seven constant apertures. A temporary wound. Skin that aches. Skin
that hides. Skin always inside. Skin that has lost its nerve endings. Skin
of the dead.

It’s said that ghosts do not have skin and wander east and west.

It’s said that in space they think with their skin.

You get close to me with your skin, or I feel your trembling with my
skin. I can’t tell whether you want to peel off my skin to give to a wolf or
a sheep to wear.

About the Editor

Born in 1962, Quingping Wang studied at Beijing University from 1983–87 and majored in Chinese literature. He has been with the People’s Literature Publishing House since 1987, where he became the fiction and poetry editor in 2002. Wang has edited a long list of collections including the Blue Star Poetry Library, with works of Hai Zi, Shi Zhi, Xi Chuan, Wang Jiaxin, Xiao Kaiyu, and Sun Wenbo. Other series he edited include Selected Poems by Famous Contemporary Chinese Poets, The …

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Reviews

“The poets included in this anthology have worked in factories, in editorial houses, on farms, in universities… Almost all of them steeped themselves in translations of poetry from abroad; some translate or edit or write criticism. Drawing from fresh sources, from a sense of their place in an international community, they are making Chinese poetry new. And, happily for those of us who don’t read Chinese, Copper Canyon is making that body of work available to English-language readers. Here is a thrilling slice of Chinese poetry in the Age of Globalization. Open wide.” —Forrest Gander, from the Foreword