Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Staunin Ma Lane

Staunin Ma Lane

Holton, Brian

Paperback

General Poetry

ISBN10: 1848614667
ISBN13: 9781848614666
Publisher: Summertime Pub
Published: Mar 18 2016
Pages: 146
Weight: 0.53
Height: 0.31 Width: 8.00 Depth: 8.00
Language: English

Staunin Ma Lane isn't intended to be a comprehensive tour of classical [Chinese] poetry, though it does contain specimens of many of the major genres and styles, and it may serve as a first primer. Note that the poetry is in the Scots: the English versions are there to help the non-Scots speaker. It has been my aim to make poems in Scots: if you expect to find dictionary definitions of Chinese words in my translations, you will be disappointed. That sort of drably mechanical 'accuracy' does not make poetry, and a poem that doesn't move the reader is like a joke that isn't funny. In the translation of poetry, there are many, many more ways of being wrong than of being right, and I do not claim that my versions are in any way definitive or better than anyone else's: I do, however, want to say to the reader, Deek whit the Mither Tongue can dae: gin it can dae this, whit'll it no can dae? (Look what our mother tongue can do: if it can do this, what will it not do?), and I would urge readers inclined toward translation to do it for themselves, whatever their mother tongue might be. -from Brian Holton's Afterword in this volume.

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