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SINGH, India
CHOI Lai Sheung, who writes brief personal lyrical poems, is a contemporary
Chinese poet, born in Shishi City in Fujian Province but now settled in Hong
Kong. An author of over 70 books and editor-in-chief of the multilingual The
World Poets Quarterly, she is also well-versed in calligraphy with an
established reputation in gymnastics and swordplay.
Reading her 100 poems in translation, I find Choi a romantic visionary poet,
with a matured aesthetic and poetic sense. Unlike many poets whose verses
are flat and stale, Choi’s poems have much of enduring value: Her verses are
not only brief and deep but also perfect and significant. She melds thoughts,
feelings and emotions, with high and low of spirit, and spectacles of inner
reality:
Both Choi and Zhang Zhizhong reach a great height of spiritual richness in
creating and translating the last two lines of the poem ‘Imperfection’.
Choi Lai Sheung’s excellence lies in her freshness in each poem. She is not
imitative of the past, nor does she think and feel in any pre-established
ways. By her own admission, she is an “industrious tiller” who tries “to reach
perfection along with the inclination and seasons/To bring fruits upon fruits”
(p. 23). Her poetic genius achieves an excellent balance between what is
conventionally available in some of the best Chinese lyrical poetry and what
we have been reading in contemporary poetry in English elsewhere. With her
fresh insights into the nature of human experiences, the reality of “a colorful
life”, she appeals richly to our senses, imagination, emotion, and intellect.
Dr Zhang Zhizhong as translator appears to have really worked hard to prove
how well Choi’s diverse materials of the poem are integrated and how
successful she has been in proportion to its tight structure. Each word he
chooses appears the right word, if not the bet word, for expressing the total
meaning of the poet. The diction and images are not trite but fresh. It goes
to his credit that in his English rendering there is no clash between the sound
of the poem and its sense. Images and ideas are so effectively arranged that
any rearrangement would result in harming the poem or its form and
content. I whole-heartedly appreciate the positive excellence of both CHOI
and Zhang Zhi. They both deserve world recognition.