October 2017 Vol. II No. X
Not your ordinary poetry magazine!
If good coffee (or just the concept of coffee), great books, sharp wit, and great authors excite you, we are for you!
Translations
with S. Ye Laird
In this Red October, we present black and white self-evident goodness in trance-gracious standards. “来自得一忘二翻译专栏，译者随时修改，译稿以译者专栏为准”。 There is no same translation nor reading for anyone who experienced true epiphany thrice from two separate long looks. And Your two cents is never taken for granted by us. Thank you for your support.
--And Bees of Paradise
Hart Crane (1899-1932)
I had come all the way here from the sea,
Yet met the wave again between your arms
Where cliff and citadel—all verily
Dissolved within a sky of beacon forms—
Sea garden lifted rainbow-wise through eyes
I found.
Yes, tall, inseparably our days
Pass sunward. We have walked the kindled skies
Inexorable and girded with your praise,
By the dove filled, and bees of Paradise.
-- 以及所有天朝的工蜂
哈特- 克莱恩,
subverted by S. Ye based on translation by 得一忘二
我从大海一路跋涉而来，
又于你的双臂间遭遇波涛，
这儿，悬崖和城堡，历历
消融于一顷蓝天，灯塔的影子绰绰，
我见识海花园穿过那双眼
涌向彩虹。
啊，高阔的日子向太阳
赓续流逝。我们已走过许多燃过的天宇，
它们不卑不亢，被你的赞美环绕，
末日将尽于美利坚的白鸽，以及所有天朝的工蜂。
About Eileen V. Flaxman:
"And then there’s poetry. Unlike any other kind of reading, poetry lies firmly in the present, gently stopping time if we let it; stopping the unrelenting urge to be productive, to turn the page briskly; to just 'get on with it' and finish. A poet relishes the details and helps us slow down to relish them, too. Kind of like spending time with a toddler, who forces you into the present as she examines a butterfly for the very first time. "
Editorial from translation Editor, yours truly S. Ye:
I'd like to list all of our contributors here that graciously given us their permission to publish or re-publish work of art, of a quality much in tune to my limited level of understanding as a first year editor on translation with this amazing online publisher and fellow editors. I thank you so whole heartedly for giving me this life-making, life-giving opportunity to have a run and play, doing what I love to do most for a whole year. I also wish to thank my husband, Dr. Eric Laird for pampering me with this leave of absence in 'other' urgent domestic works need to be done for our little kingdom of everlasting angelic existence in this material world. I also need to beg pardon those whose material I might have 'borrowed', fearing my inquiry might be seen as an unwanted disturbance to their quiet and peace of mind or due to my own shortcoming of forgetfulness.
Our contributing authors/artists/poets ( 2017- 2018 and those passed before us): Donald Mager, James Sutton, Eileen Valentino Flaxman, Michael R. Burch, Jen Yih, Mikhail Kuzmin, Hart Crane, Herman Melville, Lisa Katz, Agi Mishol, Vivian Eden, Bruce Humes, Eileen Chang, Candy Maria, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Eva Zhang, Derek Walcott, Nikolai Gumilev, Yevgeny Bonver, Browder family of Princeton, Senia Sheydvasser, Craig Stormont, Vincent Ferrini, Stuart Trusty, Ezra Pound and Rabindranath Tagore, Feng Tang, Abhay Saxena, Sibaprasad Dutta, Dorothy Parker, ROBERT HERRICK, Mao Jing, T.S. Eliot, t j a thurman, P. K. Page, Li Jingbing 李景冰, 查慎行, 赵执信, 齐白石, 梁宗岱, 程家惠,程晟, 汤显祖, 李轻舟, William Wordsworth, Shakespeare, Vladimir Nabokov, William Edgar Stafford, Alex Cigale, Daniil Kharms, Jan Saturnovsky, 戴望舒, 茅境，冯唐，老舍, Michael Cherney. Last but not the least, special thanks to editors at fortnight review, editors at big bridge and offcourse.org, manager at rights office of graywolf Press for graciously granting me reprint rights or discreet pleasures of rejections without any hand being forced on either sides. Thank you all and the show must go on for another fruitful year with your continued support and contributions!
-- last edited on Sept. 27th, 2017
Flower Power
- Jen Yih
To Understand the life cycle
of a single flower, and I promise
It'll give the power - of knowing
why someone so high in the sky
would do such a magical thing:
To bring the essense of spring
bloom into summer as if it were
some new romantic on-comer.
How something so decorative all around
only for us to be found.
Given a gift of grace without any trace
only to fill an empty space.
O flower, how you had to push
when gravity told you to cower
To reach for the sun light
when all that time you didn't
even know of its delight.
you are a gift here to life
and make us remember
to trust even when we feel
we are made of nothing,
but dust.
IF I START - Chris Andrews
I remember telling my future self, Don't
start thinking these were the best days of your life
or I'll disown you. I remember the wind,
still chilly but not unkind, stripping blossom
out of a rain-laden plum tree and bustling
the back end of an apricot storm(? or stem) away
while citrus sidelight put a fugitive glow
into bricks and tiles and gave wet bitumen
sparkling relief. I was going to covet
records, some of which I squirm to remember.
On the cover of one I never owned were
four differrently-coloured balloons in a row
resting on a sky-filled mirror of wet sand.
I think I remember that musical spring
of pure possibilities. The problem is,
there's documentary evidence to prove
that my past self was morosely nostalgic
already: If I forget thee, Wollongong...
Why should I care about being disowned by him ? *
I don't. But may I bite my tongue if I start
running down the worthwhile thing I haven't done.
Poet/translator Chris Andrews interviewed by Willing Davidson on The New Yorker ( Nov. 2011)
" What makes Episode so astonishing is the language as translated from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. Not from Aira do we get the Borges soft shoe. We get instead a supercharged Céline, writing with a Star Wars laser sword, turning Don Quixote into Picasso.
—John Leonard, Harper's
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