STRUMMING A ROPE

by Huang Fan   
Translators: Margaret Ross, Josh Stenberg, Wang Ping

Huang Fan’s poetry pursues the images of classical Chinese poetry in a modern form, expressing the contemporary consciousness of China. These poems, refracted through three very different translators, reveal the melancholy, sorrow, nihilism, sighing and reminiscence of an individual man in a contemporary China that Americans rarely read in the welter of political news. Huang Fan’s Strumming a Rope plucks at a person of our species rather than a citizen of any single country. His work is simultaneously immersed in nature, in his society and in the flurry of his own thoughts. 

Huang Fan’s poetry is SO ALIVE in these translations! Unnerving. He stirs up all the electrons of a language until they are jumping from orbit to orbit. —Forrest Gander 

In these powerful, exquisite poems, Huang Fan, a major Chinese poet, takes stock of his life from the vantage point of middle age, finding deep connections with nature, but also rueful solitude, memories of lostness, and a lingering sense of missed opportunities. These translations capture a threnody of wonder and sadness which is the poet's singular achievement.   —Phillip Lopate

Huang Fan (黄梵, 1963–), born in the rural Hubei province, is the author of three books of poetry, four novels, a story collection, and a book of essays. His poem “Middle Age” was included in the anthology One Hundred Poems for One Hundred Years of Modern Poetry. His novel The Eleventh Commandment was serialized in Sina.com.cn’s literary section. He’s the recipient of Good Poetry Prize, the Beijing Literary Prize for Poetry, Jinling Literary Prize for Poetry, the Writer’s Golden Prize for the Short Story and many others.

Translators:

Margaret Ross is the author of two books of poetry, A Timeshare (Omnidawn, 2015) and Saturday (The Song Cave, 2024). 

Josh Stenberg is the author of Minority Stages: Sino-Indonesian Performance and Public Display (University of Hawai'i Press, 2019), the translator or editor of six books of contemporary Chinese fiction and poetry, and an author of poetry and fiction.

Wang Ping has published 15 books of poetry & prose, including The River Within (MadHat, 2023), My Name Is Immigrant (Hanging Loose Press, 2021), The Last Communist Virgin (Coffee House 2016) and New Generation: Poetry from China Today (Hanging Loose 2000).