West: A Translation - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Former Utah Poet Laureate, Paisley Rekdal is the author of four works of nonfiction, including Appropriate: A Provocation, and six collections of poetry, most recently Nightingale, which won the 2020 Washington State Book Award for Poetry. She is the recipient of fellowships, grants, and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation, Pushcart Press, and the Academy of American Poets, among others. A Seattle area native, Rekdal received her MA in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto, and an MFA from the University of Michigan. Her work reflects her academic background in its frequent exploration and engagement with historical events that propel future narratives and identity politics that shape her life as an Asian American woman. She is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Utah, where she is also the creator and editor of community web projects Mapping Literary Utah and Mapping Salt Lake City.

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回/Return

If falling leaves return to roots, what grows

when leaves cannot be gathered?

What returns if not the body? What remains

if not the soul? Who is to say these graves

empty of their bones mean only loss, not

that these men escaped death's hold entirely:

they are not home, but they are not here,

either, or have become so full of here

we need another word than gone. So throw

out the cormorant, its leg tied with silken ropes.

Let it drag the air for memory. Over and over,

as many times as you want. You can't snare

what isn't missing. This country claimed their bodies.

It never trapped their souls.

千/Thousand

A thousand spades to clear the cuts. A thousand ropes

to haul out redwoods. For the mountains, a thousand arms

to scale the rocks, a thousand hands to lose

in blasts. A thousand corpses frozen in the snow.

A thousand bags of opium, oolong, rice mats. A thousand

and a thousand and a thousand added to each payroll

but not a single name. A thousand shards of pottery

haloing the trestle. Someone's sketched a worker's face

along the flip side of a telegram. He's four dollars

a day, 35$ a month. His profile wreathes

like smoke between the numbers. How many cairns

did you say we passed outside Kelton?

Translate these absences to bodies.

Translate these bodies back to men.

思鄉/ Miss Home

Ways to die: blasting accident, derailment,

boiler crack. Crushed between trains crossing

in the night. Electrocution,

bad food, heart attack. You can work

yourself to death, a la John,

a la Henry. Or you can stay at home, and die

anyway: fist and noose, club, gun, knife

in the back. Gossip. Sharecropping. Bottle of rum

with gas-soaked rag. What is freedom

but the power to choose

where you won't die? What is a train

but the self once yoked to terror loosed

inside a force that glides

on heat and steam? You're so far

from Mississippi, the UP boss said

when we hit Rock Springs. Don't you miss

your home? Miss home? I told him.

I'm hoping to miss it entirely.

有識/ Have Knowledge

Immigration questionnaire given to Chinese claiming to be former US residents, or for

Chinese entering the country during the Chinese Exclusion Act.

Have you ridden in a streetcar?

Can you describe the taste of bread?

Where are the joss houses located in the city?

Do Jackson Street and Dupont

run in a circle or a line, what is the fruit

your mother ate before she bore you,

how many letters a year

do you receive from your father?

Of which material is his ancestral hall now built?

How many water buffalo

does your uncle own? Do you love him?

Do you hate her? What kind of bird sang

at your parents' wedding?

What are the birth dates

for each of your cousins; did your brother die

from starvation, work, or murder?

Do you know the price of tea?

Have you ever touched a stranger's face

as he slept? Did it snow the year

you first wintered in the desert? How much weight

is a bucket and a hammer? Which store

is opposite your grandmother's?

Did you sleep with that man

for money? Did you sleep with that man

for love? Name the color and number

of all your mother's dresses. Now

your village's rivers.

What diseases of the heart

do you carry? What country do you see

when you think of your children?

Does your sister ever write?

In which direction does her front door face?

How many steps did you take

when you finally left her? How far did you walk

before you looked back?