Middle-Aged Man's Self-Portrait

Translated by Xisheng Chen and Chen Du

MIDDLE-AGED MAN'S SELF-PORTRAIT, poems by Yan An, translated by Chen Du & Xisheng Chen. Cover art by Yichao Sun 孙毅超. (17 pages, paper, staple-bound. Toad Press, 2025. $6.00)

Yan An's poems are highly surreal, mythical, unconventional, and unique according to the standards and traditions of Chinese culture, considering their aesthetic value, content, philosophical denotations, and meanings. As a pioneer in modern westernized Chinese poetry, Yan An has completely transformed Chinese readers' understanding of poetry through his unique views about the universe, life, society, and people. His way of thinking is unusual and unconventional. His poems do not contain the Chinese elements traditionally and commonly depicted by other Chinese poets and even if they do, they are addressed from unique perspectives; they can transcend the boundaries between nations and cultures, reaching for a wider audience across the world. In each of his poems, behind his boundless imagination, there lies a story and Yan An's sentiments and understandings of life, people, society, and the universe.

His language is intense and abstract. These poems are rich in literary devices, such as, similes, metaphors, personifications, and parallelisms. These literary devices have well served their purpose in the Chinese versions. Nevertheless, in their English versions, some transcreation techniques have to be exploited to retain the same or similar effect. - Chen Du & Xisheng Cheng

(as poem) Self-Portrait at Middle Age

Translated by Canaan Morse