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My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree: Selected Poems - Paperback | Diverse Reads

My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree: Selected Poems

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One of China’s most significant contemporary poets, co-translated by former US Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith

*Shortlisted for the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize*

Yi Lei published her poem “A Single Woman’s Bedroom” in 1987, when cohabitation before marriage was a punishable crime in China. She was met with major critical acclaim—and with outrage—for her frank embrace of women’s erotic desire and her unabashed critique of oppressive law. Over the span of her revolutionary career, Yi Lei became one of the most influential figures in contemporary Chinese poetry.

Passionate, rigorous, and inimitable, the poems in My Name Will Grow Wide Like a Tree celebrate the joys of the body, ponder the miracle of compassion, and proclaim an abiding reverence for the natural world. Presented in the original Chinese alongside English translations by Changtai Bi and Pulitzer Prize–winning poet Tracy K. Smith, this collection introduces American readers to a boundless spirit—one “composing an explosion.”

ISBN-13: 9781644450406

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: Graywolf Press

Publication Date: 11-03-2020

Pages: 192

Product Dimensions: 8.90(w) x 5.80(h) x 0.50(d)

Yi Lei (1951–2018) received the Zhuang Zhongwen Literature Prize and published eight collections of poems, including A Single Woman’s Bedroom, The Love Poems of Yi Lei, and Women’s Age. Her work has been translated into five languages.

Table of Contents

Introduction Tracy K. Smith vii

Green Trees Greet the Rainstorm 3

Huangguoshu Waterfall 4

Between Strangers 5

Picnic 6

Furtive 7

Love's Dance 8

A Single Woman's Bedroom 20

Besieged 29

Black Hair 36

Red Wall 39

Nightmare 40

Flesh 41

As Clear and Thus as Virtuous as Glass 42

The Nude 43

Preserved Flower 44

With Whitman 45

Glorious Golden Birds Are Singing 46

Summer 47

Flame in the Cloud at Midnight 53

In the Distance 54

Talking to Myself 55

Nature Aria 56

Heavy Rain 58

Postperpetual 59

Mother- 60

Song for Heaven, Earth and Humankind 62

To the Viewer 63

Coronation of the Roses 65

Notes 67