SOURCE: Dragin, Peter, and Paul Dresman. “Forms of Open Form: A Comparison of English Translations of Li Ch'ing-chao.” Tamkang Review: A Quarterly of Comparative Studies between Chinese and Foreign Literatures 15, nos. 1, 2, 3, 4 (autumn-summer 1984-85): 285-306.

In the following essay, Dragin and Dresman compare different translations of Li Ch'ing-chao's poetry into English and find that none is really more successful than the others.

Remarking upon American poetry in this century, Kenneth Rexroth defined the major groups as those who were metaphysical poets and those who were anti-literary and based their poetics in presentational immediacy.¹ The American metaphysical poets have displayed little interest in Chinese poetry and poetics. On the other hand, the poets of presentational immediacy, the Imagists, Objectivists and Post-modernists, have been influenced by Chinese poetry and poetics. The major translators of the Sung woman poet, Li Ch'ing Chao, are Kenneth Rexroth (and his later collaborator, Ling Chung) and...