“Yu finds the numinous in the very dust and air of Hengdian….Sze-Lorrain’s translation successfully evokes Yu’s transcendental connection to the world around her, from the grass at her feet to the sky above her.”
—Anne Henochowicz, Los Angeles Review of Books
“…a lyrical translation by Fiona Sze-Lorrain…The ruminative essays, rendered in elegant but somewhat mannered prose, offer context and insight on her life and poetry, […] The poems, which compress her thoughts into daring and disconcerting forms, are another matter. […] The multiplicity, therefore, becomes essential, as the poems are rarely frozen in a single feeling. Yu renders her life in a way that is irreducible.”
— Chris Littlewood, The Washington Post
“Yu Xiuhua’s writing is steeped in the imagination […] Many of the poems included in this work are moving precisely because of how they register the limits of the imagination, rather than its transformative capacities. […] Rejecting the poetics of metaphor, lines like [Yu’s] call on us to look closely, listen carefully, and notice the world around us.”
—Rebecca Ruth Gould, Harriet Books, the Poetry Foundation
“Yu Xiuhua’s Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, grows out of highly personal terrain. This farmer-poet says in an essay (Moonlight is sectioned by eight lyrical essays): ‘We have man-handled so many words that I only dream of using them anew.’ Yu says exactly what she means; and Sze-Lorrain honors the feeling and music in intimate translation. Thus, the poet’s language rises out of the natural, tinged by elemental soil and light.”
—Yusef Komunyakaa, author of Everyday Mojo Songs of Earth
“‘Truth once spoken tends to be false,’ writes Yu Xiuhua in her incredible debut of essays and poems. I am smitten with Yu’s powerful writing, erotic poetry, and reflections on disability in daily life. One poem reads, ‘So risky, so heavy / O this love.’ I want nothing but risk in poetry and I feel proud to be a disabled poet in Yu’s company.”
—The Cyborg Jillian Weise, author of Common Cyborg
“I love reading these poems and essays by Yu Xiuhua. I feel befriended by them, by her. Courage, honesty, a love of words, and a wry sense of humor run through the pages of Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm, translated with grace and simplicity by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. When Yu writes in an essay, ‘There is no better ode to life than a weed that grows ruthlessly and arches out of the ground, despite its trauma,’ we know she is telling us her own story. And yet, in a poem called ‘Wheat Has Ripened,’ she says, ‘I am pleased to have landed here / like a sparrow skirting through the sky-blue.’ How can we be anything but grateful to a poet who ends a poem of love lost: ‘I still hope / to err over and over’?”
—Mary Helen Stefaniak, author of The Cailiffs of Baghdad, Georgia
“I couldn’t stop underlining phrases, sentences, whole passages that I wanted to quote, and think about! Yu Xiuhua’s marvelous collection, a hybrid of poetry and poetical essays, each reflecting back on the other, is a transport into the soul, heart, and sensibility of a unique and exquisite mind. Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s translation, generous with silence, space, and pitch-perfect transparency, is a triumph in its own right. This is the sort of book that you’ll want to share immediately with your most thoughtful friend.”
—Minna Zallman Proctor, author of Landslide: True Stories, editor of The Literary Review, and translator of Natalia Ginzburg and Fleur Jaeggy
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