Carrying Over

Carolyn Kizer is a skilled poet in her own right (Pulitzer prize, 1985 for Yin), but here translates works in 5 different languages. She says she is "only an occasional and amateur translator", but the poems here all ring true. I was most impressed with the poems from 8th century China, by Tu Fu. They have a Taoist sound "Clouds drift among the towers. Along again, I burn the draft of another memorandum" that somehow refresh this modern office worker. "Like a knife in a melon, Autumn slices Summer." The book ends with modern Chinese poems from Shu Ting, which meld with the modern "Wild swan: my temperament, / You vow to confront winter, unprotected / Even with a bullet wound / Rather than linger in the cage of Spring." The two Yiddish poems are from the modern poet Rachel Korn "Let me pillow myself on the book of my peregrinations". The Pakistan "journal" appears from 1969, and seems a little too personal, dusty, and gritty, but somehow complements the exotic Faiz Ahmed Faiz poems "Every drop is the fury of a cobra." For an unknown reason, the African poems include the French originals, and speak of exile and roots "know the substance of exile;/ on the sea, wind and thunder/ recognizing all the roots / of the trees that rejects me". This book is a good poetic travelogue.

This book is NOT the book she won her Pulizer Prize for (now, you go hunting) but it shows that class of art. One of the few "free" translators of Chinese poetry whose work has been approve (in public and in publication) by Chinese scholars. And there's more. You would do well to simply buy everything this poet has in print. Try Mermaids in The Basement.