Li Liyang
Translated by Cai Tianxin
She started singing, and my grandmother also sang along.
The mother and daughter sang like a pair of young sisters.
If my father were still alive, he would play
his accordion and rock it like a boat.
I have never been to Beijing or the Summer Palace,
I have not stood on that huge stone boat to watch the rain falling on Kunming Lake. , the picnickers
ran far away and left the grass.
I love to hear the sound of rain;
How the leaves of water lilies are filled with raindrops until
they turn over and drain the water into the lake in,
then rocking back in for more water.
The two women began to sob,
but neither stopped singing.
The poet’s mother is the granddaughter of Yuan Shikai. She once had a prominent family. The Summer Palace should have been a place where her mother often went to play and relax as a child, and Beijing was her childhood paradise. There is also the sweetness and sourness of her youth. My mother must have often told the poet about the events of that year, and the imagination of the Summer Palace in the poem is based on this.
Due to political reasons and other reasons, the poet's family moved around in his early years, settling in Malaysia, Hong Kong and other places, and finally settled in the United States. The poet's father died when the poet was young and was arrested many times during his lifetime.
Li-Young Lee (1957-) is one of the most influential contemporary poets in the United States. He was born in 1957 in Asada, the capital of Indonesia. In 1964, he The family moved to the United States. After graduating from college in 1979, he went to the University of Arizona and the State University of New York at Brockport to major in literary creation. Due to his outstanding achievements, the State University of New York at Brockport awarded him an honorary doctorate in literature. His first collection of poetry, "Rose," won the New York University Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award and the Huaiting Writers Award in 1986; his second collection of poetry, "In This City I Love You," won the Poetry Society of America's Poetry Society of America in 1990. Lamont Poetry Award; his prose poem memoir "The Winged Seed: Remembrance" won the American Book Award in 1995. In the same year, he also won the Lannan Literary Award; his third collection of poetry "My Night Book" won the 2001 American Book Award. Poetry Society of America's William Carlos Williams Award. Other awards and honors received include: National Endowment for the Arts Award, Pushkar Award three times, Pennsylvania Arts Council Award, Illinois Arts Council Award, Guggenheim Research Foundation Award, etc. Based on his contribution to American poetry, he was invited to become a member of the Society of American Poets in 2003.