Li Qingzhao (1084-1151 CE) is considered the greatest woman poet in Chinese history but, as translator Wendy Chen writes in her introduction, Li “remains relatively unknown in the West.” Chen, who first heard Li’s poetry as a child, is determined to help change this. The Magpie at Night is Chen’s translation of the Song-dynasty writer in a collection of poetry that feels both of its era but also carries a timeliness that renders Li’s poetry as accessible as it is moving.
Chen has intentionally presented the poems on their own (explanatory notes are included at the back), leaving the writing to speak for itself. Take the opening poem, “As in a dream”:
Remember that day
spent on the stream,
watching the sunset glaze
the pavilion.
So drunk, we could not find
our way back.
Poems are often marked by festivals or the broader seasons in a year, for example:
Thin fog, thick clouds. The day
Is a stretch of longing.
Sticks of camphor burn away
in the mouths of golden beasts.
Once again, it is the Chongyang festival.
Or “Barbarian Bodhisattva”, which begins:
Soft wind. Pale sun.
Spring is just beginning.
I feel good
in my lined jacket.
But rising from sleep,
I am a little cold.
They capture emotions of longing and remembrance, of the passing of time, like in “Remembering Qin E”:
The west wind hastens
the falling of wutong leaves,
the falling of wutong leaves.
Once more, autumn colors.
Once more, loneliness.
In her introduction, Chen writes of when she first heard Li’s poetry and recalls being impressed by the poet’s imagery and the breadth of her work. Li, Chen writes, “mastered ci (lyrics), composed scholarly wen (essays) on a variety of subjects, and wrote political shi (poems) criticizing government policies.” And yet, Chen writes, despite being acknowledged after her death as a master of her craft, her work, like many women writers, was not given the same care and attention to its preservation.
Chen began translating Li’s poetry as a teenager and her knowledge of and passion for Chen’s work is welcomed. Chen is a confident translator navigating deceptively sparse works alongside longer poems. Chen’s sense of rhythm and musicality makes it easy for a reader to become engrossed in Li’s work even without a background in the Song Dynasty.
In “Butterflies Long for the Flowers (gathering on kin of Shangsi Festival)”, Li describes a dream
Of Chang’an
and returning by old road.
The poem finishes:
The feelings I make into poems
are like the magpie at night,
circling three times, unable to settle.
Li’s work frequently lingers on the page, her perspective and view on the world, as Chen writes, “mak[ing] it feel as though her poems were written just for us—just yesterday.”