The Silk Dragon: Translations from the Chinese

Translator: Arthur Sze

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press (2001)

Arthur Sze has rare qualifications when it comes to translating Chinese: he is an award-winning poet who was raised in both languages. A second-generation Chinese-American, Sze has gathered over 70 poems by poets who have had a profound effect on Chinese culture, American poetics and Sze's own maturation as an artist. Also included is an informative insightful essay on the methods and processes involved in translating ideogrammic poetry.

“By petal, by word, by image Sze reveals the translator’s craft: he uncovers the raw spirit and linguistic skill of the poem in Chinese, and then years and a few continents later he reassembles the poem tenderly into another language, another time. The poems are exquisite.”

–Judges’ citation, Western States Book Award for Translation