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Zhang Er

Zhang Er (Chinese: 张耳, born 1960) is the pen name of Chinese and American poet, translator, and opera librettist Mingxia Li (李明霞). Born in Beijing, China, where she trained as a physician, she has lived in the United States since 1986.[1] She earned a Ph.D. in Molecular Pharmacology in 1992 from the Graduate School of Medical Sciences of Cornell University (now the Weill Cornell Graduate School), while simultaneously immersing herself in the New York poetry scene, where she wrote poetry, hosted bilingual readings, and edited literary journals.[2] She now teaches at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, and continues to write poetry.[3]

Reception

Zhang Er's work has been published online and in print in China, Taiwan, and the United States.[4] In reference to her 2004 Verses on Bird, Chinese-American poet Bei Dao wrote that "Zhang Er's poems lead us to another world, where we take a bird's-eye view of our world; dive into the blank of writing and shriek in despair. The eloquence in her poems is a voice debating our time."[5] In an article published in Comparative Literature: East and West in 2009, the Chinese poet, translator, scholar and editor Zhang Ziqing described Zhang Er as "a brilliant bilingual translator [who] made a great success [sic] in introducing American and Chinese poetries into each other's country," and added that "her translations of American poets would appear in Poetry in Beijing, a poetry journal similar to Poetry in Chicago. Her poems in Chinese often came out in New World Poetry Bimonthly in Los Angeles, an influential poetry journal distributed in the Chinese speaking areas of the world."[6] Yellow Rabbits Reviews called the poems in her most recent collection of poetry in English, First Mountain, "intensely immediate...collected pauses and spirited moments of grace."[7] Starting in the 2010s, Zhang Er began to write opera librettos. Moon in the Mirror, for which she cowrote the libretto in collaboration with Martine Bellen, has been performed in Flushing, Queens, and at Cleveland State University.[8][9] Her opera Cai Yan premiered at Pacific Lutheran University in 2016.[10][11] Zhang Er's opera Tacoma Method, with music by composer Gregory Youtz, takes on the titular city's expulsion of Chinese residents in 1885. It premiered at Tacoma Opera in 2023.[12]

Selected bibliography

Poetry in Chinese

Poetry in English Translation

Anthologies

Opera librettos

Chapbooks

References

  1. ^ "Zhang Er". Words Without Borders. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
  2. ^ "Zhang Er | Poetry In Voice". www.poetryinvoice.com. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
  3. ^ "Zhang Er". New Music USA. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
  4. ^ "YR #64: First Mountain by Zhang Er". YELLOW RABBITS. Retrieved 2021-07-15.
  5. ^ "Verses on Bird, by Zhang Er". ZephyrPress. Retrieved 2021-07-15.
  6. ^ Zhang, Ziqing (2009). "Does Poetry Make Anything Happen? —A Dialogue between Chinese and American Poets in the 20 th Century". Comparative Literature: East & West. 11 (1): 86–87. doi:10.1080/25723618.2009.12015359. ISSN 2572-3618.
  7. ^ "YR #64: First Mountain by Zhang Er". YELLOW RABBITS. Retrieved 2021-07-28.
  8. ^ "Moon in the Mirror: A Monodrama Opera". Queens Council on the Arts. Retrieved 2021-07-16.
  9. ^ "Moon in the Mirror comes to Cleveland State". Cleveland Classical. 2020-01-27. Retrieved 2021-07-16.
  10. ^ "Pacific Lutheran University premieres new original opera: Fiery Jade Cai Yan". Pacific Lutheran University. Retrieved 2021-07-16.
  11. ^ Ponnekanti, Rosemary (November 10, 2016). "'Fiery Jade' turns ancient Chinese heroine into a new Tacoma opera". The News Tribune. Retrieved July 16, 2021.
  12. ^ "New opera takes on Tacoma's past expulsion of Chinese residents". The Seattle Times. 2023-03-23. Retrieved 2023-06-05.
  13. ^ Eberlein, Xujun (May 20, 2016). "Is There a Good Way to Translate Chinese Poetry?". Los Angeles Review of Books. Retrieved 4 July 2021.
  14. ^ "Moon in the Mirror: A Monodrama Opera". Queens Council on the Arts. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
  15. ^ "Pacific Lutheran University premieres new original opera: Fiery Jade Cai Yan". Pacific Lutheran University. Retrieved 2021-03-08.
  16. ^ a b Ray, Roxanne (June 28, 2021). "Opera "Tacoma Method" takes on the violent expulsion of the Chinese population in Tacoma in 1885". International Examiner. Retrieved 4 July 2021.
  17. ^ "New opera takes on Tacoma's past expulsion of Chinese residents". The Seattle Times. 2023-03-23. Retrieved 2023-06-05.