A luminous new translation of the greatest woman poet in Chinese history, highlighting Li Qingzhao's iconoclastic verse and showcasing her visionary portrait of the inner workings of the artist's mind.
“The Magpie at Night” is a lyrical and searching portrait of the inner life of Li Qingzhao, one of the greatest poets in Chinese literary history. These spare and arresting poems evoke with rare immediacy the quiet and haunting beauty of country life during the Song dynasty; the unseen, restive labor of the poet; and Li Qingzhao's bracing and complex take on what it means to create art as a woman in the shadow of exile, war, imprisonment, and an unwelcoming literary establishment.
In Wendy Chen's splendid new translation, each of Li Qingzhao's ci—lyrics that were originally set to music—is as sharp and fresh as the edge of a new spring leaf. These richly textured bolts of melody tell a story that will resonate with scholars eager to restore this iconic figure to the canon of classical Chinese poetry, as well as with contemporary readers who will relate to the strikingly modern mode in which she delivers her wry, unsentimental, and bracing thoughts on art and posterity.
"Chen untangles the essences of poems into delicate, calm, and incisive moments."
Poetry Northwest
"Translator Wendy Chen's Introduction offers a useful overview of and introduction to twelfth-century Chinese poet Li Qingzhao...Certainly, Chen's version seems closer to the more seething spirit of the original. . . Chen's are fine renderings of the verse."
M.A. Orthofer, The Complete Review
"The Magpie at Night teaches us many a lesson of transformations: we learn that hair "grieves" and the water clock is "quiet," we learn that the "pot of spring" can break apart memory. But most of all, we learn that poetry can survive the ravages of war and time, and after many centuries"
