Marilyn Chin responds:
The first two characters in the quatrain are onomatopoeic, mimicking the sound of a woman's crying. Therefore, "boo-hoo" is an accurate translation, both semantically and tonally. I was aiming to capture the edgy, satirical attitude so ample in Ho's work.
Perhaps Joseph Bednarik is not conscious that "noodling around in the margins" is an appalling and problematic expression, fraught with demeaning sexist, racist, imperialist overtones, and born out of the very hateful stuff that Ho Xuan Huong so pointedly and whole-heartedly fought against in her poetry and in her life. All ugliness revealed, perhaps we could finally cut through his pernicious smugness and have that real discussion regarding how many Western cultural imperialists does it take to plunder Wang Wei and who, if anyone, should have the rightful claim to an Asian woman's poetry. "Noodling" could have been an unfortunate slip and not unconscious hatred; but he might as well have said "flied-licing." Perhaps Bednarik and his press believe that the white male patriarchy must forever colonize the translation of Asian poetry and that I, a dark-skinned Asian woman poet, should not be "noodling" where I don't belong.
The first two characters in the quatrain are onomatopoeic, mimicking the sound of a woman's crying. Therefore, "boo-hoo" is an accurate translation, both semantically and tonally. I was aiming to capture the edgy, satirical attitude so ample in Ho's work.
Perhaps Joseph Bednarik is not conscious that "noodling around in the margins" is an appalling and problematic expression, fraught with demeaning sexist, racist, imperialist overtones, and born out of the very hateful stuff that Ho Xuan Huong so pointedly and whole-heartedly fought against in her poetry and in her life. All ugliness revealed, perhaps we could finally cut through his pernicious smugness and have that real discussion regarding how many Western cultural imperialists does it take to plunder Wang Wei and who, if anyone, should have the rightful claim to an Asian woman's poetry. "Noodling" could have been an unfortunate slip and not unconscious hatred; but he might as well have said "flied-licing." Perhaps Bednarik and his press believe that the white male patriarchy must forever colonize the translation of Asian poetry and that I, a dark-skinned Asian woman poet, should not be "noodling" where I don't belong.
Marilyn Chin was born in Hong Kong and grew up in Portland, Oregon. She earned a BA in Chinese literature from the University of Massachusetts and an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. A noted anthologist, translator, and educator, as well as a poet and novelist, Chin’s work distills her experiences as a feminist and Asian American woman. Her poetry is noted for its direct and often confrontational…