10 Questions for Yuemin He
- By Staff
Your mouth feels bitter if you haven’t spoken for long
Not speaking for a long time, this bitterness
occurs, like a gallbladder
full of darkness and in darkness trembling
—from "Bitterness in the Mouth" by Zhang Zhihao, Translated by Yuemin He
What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Valdmir Nabokov for his penetrating thinking, erudition, and beautiful language command from reading Lolita, Pale Fire, etc.
Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji for its simplicity
Works by Li Bai, Du Fu, Bai Juyi, Wang Wei, and other traditional Chinese poets for their sheer beauty
Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and T. S. Eliot for helping me dwelling in the 20th century to be able to hark back to the past and look forward to the future, thus making the past and the future all the present
Max Shulman for his humor such as demonstrated in his short story “Love Is a Fallacy”
The Sympathizer by Viet Thank Nguyen and M. Butterfly by David Henry Hwang for its ability to tie popular writing and academics seamlessly, providing layers and layers of pleasure and thought to readers of various stripes, or the latter, for its fascinating integration of the real and the fictional
What other professions have you worked in?
I have been a college educator most of my life, but in my own way, it has been the alternative experiences of being a gardener, an excellent chef, or a Mari Condo type of consultant. They have one commonality – detailed attention to the other, an enhanced connectivity with oneself, and a mind of one’s own
What did you want to be when you were young?
I did not know what I wanted to be. I knew the world was so big though my reality was very tiny and impoverished both materially and spiritually. I did know I wanted to be a woman who enjoys free spirit and a life enriched with words, images, sounds, shapes, and rhythms. It started from the day when I was a lonely 5-year-old girl overhearing our neighbor’s son listening to an adult telling him the story of a magic monkey and I knew I wanted a lot of that.
What drew you to write a translation of this piece in particular?
As writers we all believe in the power of words. “A Life Unexpected Before” by Zhang Zhihao engages with that idea. It first negates that idea, showing the powerlessness of words, questioning the power of poetry to help us deal with separation or alienation incurred by the pandemic and censure, voluntarily and involuntarily. Then it miraculously proves that poetry in effect not only fills the space but also indeed brings people together by the poem’s own relatable qualities, thus fulfilling the mission of poetry as laid out by Marianne Moore, “imaginary gardens with real toads in them” or as Chilean poet Nicanor Parra (trans. by Miller Willaims) remarks in “Young Poets”
In poetry everything is permitted.
With only this condition of course,
You have to improve the blank page.
Zhang fills the page with valuable faith in words alive with cool lake water, weeping willows, and dawn redwoods. I love the clarity of it,
Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
William Carlos Williams’s Camden, Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, Zhang’s Jianghan Plain and its surroundings, Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Xanadu, Liu Cixin’s three-body problem galaxy etc. These locations embody the core of real life or zenith of human imagination.
Is there any specific music that aids you through the writing or editing process?
Yes, I like music, such as the power of water in Vltava by Smetana or tenderness in Chopin by Pollini. These types of music not only help to shut down noises and enable me to pay attention to work at hand but also illustrative of the art of interpretation, recreation, and presentation, which both a writer and translator need.
Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
For poetry translations I am not very restricted by my mood, place, or time. As long as I have some time, I will set about to work. For fiction, usually I do most of the work in my mind before I sit down to type. For academic work, I follow typical research processes and usually I can complete the work as planned. If there is any ritual at all for all these activities, it is watering my plants first before I sit down at the computer. Somehow watering plants feels the closest to writing.
If you could work in another art form, what would it be?
I have always felt the urge to combine writing, music, painting, and other genres together. I like intertextuality and multi-media, but I don’t have the time, training, and background for them all. So, most of the time I am a fascinated audience.
What are you working on currently?
I am working on a poetry translation book titled I Have Seen the Yellow Crane. The book features180 poems, selected mainly from Wild Flowers on the Plateau and The Everlasting Pot by contemporary Chinese poet Zhang Zhihao (Two of his poems are published by MR). It showcases the poet’s remarkable ability to unravel the subtlest meanings from trivial happenings in the streets and alleys and the natural world, and then conveys them in extraordinary poetic language. Ultimately, it offers the readers a vicarious experience of sizzling youth, the wide Jianghan Plain, capacious ability to embrace the multitudes, and relay of valuable human traditions. In short, the book is a city in and of itself about the city of Wuhan and its suburban neighborhoods.
What are you reading right now?
For translation study, I am discussing with a group of fellow translators George Steiner’s book After Babel and Edward Seidensticker’s “Free Vs. Literal Translation”
For poetry translation, I am reading The Silk Dragon II, (trans. Arthur Sze, Copper Canyon, 2024)
For books, I came across Amitav Ghosh's latest book, Smoke and Ashes (2023) at a book reading, and I am reading it for fun.
DR.YUEMIN HE is a writer, translator, and editor based in Virginia. She has published on East Asian literature and visual art, Asian American literature, Buddhist American literature, and composition pedagogy. Her writings appear in The Emergence of Buddhist American Literature (CUNY), Religion and the Arts, and Teaching Asian North American Texts (MLA 2022). Her poetry translations have been anthologized in Oxford Anthology of Modern and Contemporary American Poetry (2nd ed.) or have appeared in more than twenty literary magazines and journals, including Metamorphoses, The Cincinnati Review, Copper Nickel, and Silk Road Review. Currently, she is an English professor at Northern Virginia Community College and serves as an editor for The Northern Virginia Review.
