Translations of Chinese Poems by American Poets Since Pound: a Craft Class by Wang Jiaxin (via Zoom)

Since Pound, the influence of Chinese classical poetics has penetrated deep into American poets. This is why William Carlos Williams‘ “No ideas/ but in things” became a poetic motto of American poets after Pound.

“No ideas” is not to say that a poet does not need ideas, but to beware of distorting or obscuring the presentation of things with ideas. That is, “stay still/let the wind speak”. S. Merwin: “As of now, American poetry is unimaginable without considering the influence of Chinese poetry. This influence has become part of the tradition of American poetry itself.”

WANG Jiaxin 王家新  (poet, essayist, translator, scholar; China) is the author of five poetry collections, ten books of critical essays, and a translator of, among others, Paul Celan. Among his edited anthologies are a volume of Yeats’ works, three collections of 20th century European and American poetry, and two of contemporary Chinese poetry. His first collection of poems in English is Darkening Mirror: New and Selected Poems (Tebot Bach, 2016). Wang Jiaxin is a professor at Renmin University (Beijing) and the director of its International Writing Center.