Wen Yiduo did not like free verse. He objected to the idea that Chinese poetry should use such a form. So it was weird to me that people have almost always translated him into free verse in English.
Asymptote has published on its blog three of the results of my attempts to do otherwise.
"Deadwater" is given in deliberately imperfect iambics (with one extrametrical syllable everywhere but the last line) to try and give a sense of the shifting and staggered word-footed rhythm of his invented
sĭshuĭ meter. (My first draft was in perfect pentameters with full rhymes throughout, but the more I thought about it the more it felt like something slightly different was called for.)
Three formal translations from Wen Yiduo up on Asymptote's blog
Hybrid Mode
