Previous translations of Chinese classical poetry I have read are all from collections by Arthur Waley and Kenneth Rexroth. These versions by Eddie Tay read better than Rexroth's efforts (done, it has been demonstrated, from French translations, not the Chinese originals) and are certainly as good as Waley's justly celebrated renderings. Here the original Chinese is printed alongside them.
It may be that translation is Eddie Tay's true calling. But even working mostly as a poet in his own right, he shouldn't be afraid of including plenty of translated material in his books. Many fine poets, from Geoffrey Chaucer to Ezra Pound, translated a good deal, and drew distinctive strength and character from the authors they translated. Eddie Tay can do likewise, and is clearly already doing so.
The Malaysian poet Wong Phui Nam, reviewing Eddie Tay's first volume in Singapore's Straits Times, called the reworkings of older poetry that book's weakest section. (Strangely, it was also in three sections, also opened with a 15-poem sequence, and also contained renderings of Tang Dynasty poets in its middle section). By contrast, I think the versions of Li Shang-yin are this new volume's strongest pages.
The concluding single poems range from vignettes of domestic life in a variety of personas to a restless awareness of the ghosts of other artists who preceded him (TS Eliot and William Wordsworth are quoted, and Salvador Dali referred to). There's one poem about locking himself out of his apartment, another about a beauty queen (No pictures please. I'm not wearing make-up), another about Chinese religious offerings, another that makes you think Tay is thinking of Singapore when it ends, "No child dares climb these trees,/for chaos is not theirs to learn."
All in all, this is a very impressive collection. Eddie Tay should write more, and even more adventurously, ranging more widely. Not only translations need be set in ancient China, for instance. The A Lover's Soliloquy sequence ends with the speaker wondering if he should go to China, "rise in an unfamiliar room of calligraphy in a murderous century and roam in unfamiliar streets." Perhaps Eddie Tay should, imaginatively at least.
Publication Notes:
A lover's Soliloquy
By Eddei Tay
71 Pages
Sixth Finger Press
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