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Overview

Incisive and confessional, Raised by Wolves collects the most acclaimed work of Taiwanese poet -filmmaker Amang. In her poems, Amang turns her razor-sharp eye to everything from her suitors ("For twenty years I’ve loved you, twenty years / So why not say yes / You want to see my nude photos ?") to international affairs —"You’d have to win the lottery ten times over / And the U.N. hasn’t won it even once." Keenly observational yet occasionally absurd, these poems are urgent and lucid, as Amang embraces the cruelty and beauty of life in equal measure.

Raised by Wolves also presents a groundbreaking new framework for translation. Far from positing the transition between languages as an invisible and fixed process, Amang and translator Steve Bradbury let the reader in. Multiple English versions of the same Chinese poem often accompany dialogues between author and translator: the two debate as wide -ranging topics as the merits of English tenses, the role of Chinese mythology, and whether to tell the truth you have to lie a little, or a lot. Author, her poems, and translator, work in tandem, "Wanting that which was unbearable / To appear unbearable / Just as it should be."

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781646050208
Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date: 09/01/2020
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
File size: 9 MB

About the Author

Amang was born and raised on the scenic east coast of Taiwan. She is the author of four volumes of verse: On/Off: Selected Poems of Amang, 1995-2002 (2003), No Daddy (2008), Chariots of Women (2016), and As We Embrace Thousands Are Dying (2016). Her work has appeared in various print and online journals in Asia and the United States. An avid blogger and mountaineer, Amang makes video documentaries and "video poems." Her first documentary, Express Mail, Address Unknown, was featured at the 2011 Women Make Waves Film Festival in Taiwan. Poetry film Hot Spring Museum screened for one month at Beitou Hot Spring Museum. Poetry films Amniotic Fluid, oceans apart and MORE THAN ONE screened online by AXW Film Festival.

Steve Bradbury lived for many years in Taiwan, where he was Associate Professor of English at National Central Universityand founding editor of Full Tilt: a journal of East-Asia poetry, translation and the arts. A long-standing member of the American Literary Translators Association, he is a recipient of a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant, a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship, and two Henry Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships. He has published hundreds of translations in over fifty journals and anthologies and written extensively on the subject of Chinese poetry in translation. His most recent book-length translation, Hsia Yü’s Salsa (Zephyr Press, 2014), was short-listed for the Lucien Stryk Prize. His previous collection, a chapbook of the poetry of Ye Mimi entitled His Days Go by the Way Her Years (Anomalous Press 2013), was a finalist for the Best Translated Book Award.

Read an Excerpt

Papa was Poor, Mama Bone Dry

Papa was poor and Mama bone dry
A patch of dirt and all these mouths to feed . . .
We hung our heads and gnawed at the grass
What there was of it
Shat green

A few years later
We were reunited in a film
Big Brother played a soldier, a walkon part in a distant shot
Baby Brother an old lady at a closer remove
As Sis fell I too pretended to be hit, mewled
Help! And had our only speaking part
Because I was dying
The director, in an improvisational turn, unbuttoned
My blouse and anointed me with blood

The whole scene lasted less than thirty seconds
Each shot a single take
Film stock being so dear
The shooting done
We flocked to the park to munch our box lunches
Sis lifted a hand toward the grassy prospect
Of Taipei Park
And we all fell to thinking of home
Despite all the films we’ve seen, the parts we’ve played
It won’t wash out
This green, green
Mouthful of grass

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