我对着天气预报说, 唉呀, 心理准备还没有作足呢, 居然, 夏天已经来了??? 从昨天开始, 103F/39~40 C, 要持续到星期天. 我知道, 这里虽然离SF只有一个多小时车程, 但因为被山挡住了海上的水汽, 陷在山谷里有典型的冬冷夏热的内陆气候, 我知道, 这里六七月的高温可以持续45C好些天, 但是但是但是, 现在才只是五月中啊! 这样的天气, 也太疯狂了!
折腾了一个星期, 终于读完了那本诗集, 给诗人回了信, 斟酌再斟酌, 没有问我觉得很有批评性的那个问题, 只告诉他有哪几首我很喜欢. 职业写诗那么艰难, 评论人家还是应该慎重再慎重的. 面对面接触或直接通信时, 怎么能让人看到自己的不足, 但又不让他/她觉得丝毫不舒服， 批评的艺术该怎么把握? 提问该比直接给意见婉转，但要指向明确又好听好看很难啊．．．
Friday, May 16, 2008
Tuesday, May 13, 2008
Phrase of the day: "the ugly business of living"
Found this passage by Ted Berrigan quoted by Linh Dinh:
"It seems to me that anybody that writes a few hundred poems ought to be able to write a very good one. Probably should be able to write twenty very good ones. Because the first, if you start writing, the first couple of years you write quite a number of pretty good poems; it's just after that it gets a little hard. And then one wants to see what you do in the next three or four years, and if you're still around after that six or seven years, you're probably going to be around. You're probably going to be a poet. And everybody is rooting for you to do that, but if you don't, it's all right. What the hell. We get ours, you get yours. I mean, it's not quite that brutal, but in a way, it has to be. It's a full-time thing, and particularly the business of becoming a poet."
Everything said here is so true, but in the end I can't help feeling, sadly, what "business" is not "a full-time thing"!
"It seems to me that anybody that writes a few hundred poems ought to be able to write a very good one. Probably should be able to write twenty very good ones. Because the first, if you start writing, the first couple of years you write quite a number of pretty good poems; it's just after that it gets a little hard. And then one wants to see what you do in the next three or four years, and if you're still around after that six or seven years, you're probably going to be around. You're probably going to be a poet. And everybody is rooting for you to do that, but if you don't, it's all right. What the hell. We get ours, you get yours. I mean, it's not quite that brutal, but in a way, it has to be. It's a full-time thing, and particularly the business of becoming a poet."
Everything said here is so true, but in the end I can't help feeling, sadly, what "business" is not "a full-time thing"!
Monday, May 12, 2008
morning reading
--The NYT website again features large disaster photos of China on the opening page, the second or the third times in the past couple of months? What a "good" year 2008 has given us! I'm not religious, but would like to pray with all my heart that the quake-ridden families in Sichuan and the neighboring provinces can get the help they need as soon as possible!
--Last year when Prof G told me he would edit a special "China issue" of MQR for this spring, featuring writings/interviews of Yiyun Li, Ha Jin, Gao Xingjian, etc., I hadn't realized how the 2008 Beijing Olympics would affect culture and media at this side of the Pacific so greatly. Then in the past few months, it became increasingly clear that anything--simply anything-- about China would cause buzz this year. The New Yorker printed Ha Jin's "The House behind a Weeping Cherry" last month and this month gave Yiyun Li's "A Man like Him".
Both these two New Yorker stories are captivating. If Ha Jin's can be predictable in a sense with its description of Chinatown prostitutes' miserable life, Li's is not without surprises in terms of plot, set in contemporary China centering around an old bachelor art teacher. Yet while reading them I can't help wondering if they're translatable, or more specifically if the writing will remain equally good when translated into Chinese. I've always liked Ha Jin and am starting to read more by Yiyun Li after hearing endless praises of her from Americans. But deep inside, I seem to doubt if the stories can appear as interesting in Chinese as in English. Why so? What aspects of the writing make me think so? I've yet to read more closely to put my intuition into reasonable argument. No task for now. or, for ever--what's the point of taking the trouble to prove something is not as good as it appears?
--Last year when Prof G told me he would edit a special "China issue" of MQR for this spring, featuring writings/interviews of Yiyun Li, Ha Jin, Gao Xingjian, etc., I hadn't realized how the 2008 Beijing Olympics would affect culture and media at this side of the Pacific so greatly. Then in the past few months, it became increasingly clear that anything--simply anything-- about China would cause buzz this year. The New Yorker printed Ha Jin's "The House behind a Weeping Cherry" last month and this month gave Yiyun Li's "A Man like Him".
Both these two New Yorker stories are captivating. If Ha Jin's can be predictable in a sense with its description of Chinatown prostitutes' miserable life, Li's is not without surprises in terms of plot, set in contemporary China centering around an old bachelor art teacher. Yet while reading them I can't help wondering if they're translatable, or more specifically if the writing will remain equally good when translated into Chinese. I've always liked Ha Jin and am starting to read more by Yiyun Li after hearing endless praises of her from Americans. But deep inside, I seem to doubt if the stories can appear as interesting in Chinese as in English. Why so? What aspects of the writing make me think so? I've yet to read more closely to put my intuition into reasonable argument. No task for now. or, for ever--what's the point of taking the trouble to prove something is not as good as it appears?
Friday, May 9, 2008
Wednesday, May 7, 2008
Back to work
it's 1:12pm, and i tell myself to go back to work after such a long vacation (it lasts 19 days already!).
opening poetrydaily.net, i make this pretty interesting poem as a warm-up reading,
and continue i will
on the journey of dissertation
opening poetrydaily.net, i make this pretty interesting poem as a warm-up reading,
and continue i will
on the journey of dissertation
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
还是书
长周末, 我带有劲去了两次植物园. 因为那几本Tafuri的关系吧, 野鸭子是他现下除了猫以外的最爱. 一大早, 鸭子们都卧在河滩树荫下睡觉, 无奈有劲边在鸭子群里练跑步边大叫"鸭鸭", 还试图去摸它们, 扰了人家好梦, 引来一阵又一阵烦恼的叫声.
还去了趟Borders, 给邻居孩子买生日礼物, 凑巧发现一本很老的书, Make Way for Ducklings, Robert McCloskey 在1941年出的. 图画都没有上色, 只是铅笔素描的样子, 但很生动. 我翻了几页给有劲看, 他立刻对里面 小鸭子们过马路遇到汽车的一幅画有了兴趣, 就不再到处乱跑乱翻, 跟我坐下来等着继续看. 真有意思, 我瞎撞上的书倒都对他胃口, 是不是因为直觉和喜好也是有遗传因素, 他其实是和我一样的兴趣呢?
不过我其实是这样boring的一个妈妈吧, 除了书什么都不会挑.
还去了趟Borders, 给邻居孩子买生日礼物, 凑巧发现一本很老的书, Make Way for Ducklings, Robert McCloskey 在1941年出的. 图画都没有上色, 只是铅笔素描的样子, 但很生动. 我翻了几页给有劲看, 他立刻对里面 小鸭子们过马路遇到汽车的一幅画有了兴趣, 就不再到处乱跑乱翻, 跟我坐下来等着继续看. 真有意思, 我瞎撞上的书倒都对他胃口, 是不是因为直觉和喜好也是有遗传因素, 他其实是和我一样的兴趣呢?
不过我其实是这样boring的一个妈妈吧, 除了书什么都不会挑.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
好些天没正经工作了, 贴一篇几个月前的日记激励自己--
12/14/2007
The huge lights hanging down from the high ceiling doesn't illuminate as much as
the sunshine from the partly blinded windows. why should they--the lights--stay on all day long?
I'm sitting in the main reading room of Davis library, trying to write.
the conversation on MSN just now was going perfectly when i
had to cut it short. time is so limited, and i'm always in a hurry and have to multi-task
these days. While talking on MSN, I got some glimpses of Lucien Freud's portrait paintings
on NYT. They're astonishingly powerful--touching and unsettling at the same time to me.
Looking at them, I feel as if in the middle of reading a novel like A Hundred years of
solitude or Middlesex: the work's power is so tempting that I would wholeheartedly immerse
myself in it for as long as possible.
12/14/2007
The huge lights hanging down from the high ceiling doesn't illuminate as much as
the sunshine from the partly blinded windows. why should they--the lights--stay on all day long?
I'm sitting in the main reading room of Davis library, trying to write.
the conversation on MSN just now was going perfectly when i
had to cut it short. time is so limited, and i'm always in a hurry and have to multi-task
these days. While talking on MSN, I got some glimpses of Lucien Freud's portrait paintings
on NYT. They're astonishingly powerful--touching and unsettling at the same time to me.
Looking at them, I feel as if in the middle of reading a novel like A Hundred years of
solitude or Middlesex: the work's power is so tempting that I would wholeheartedly immerse
myself in it for as long as possible.
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