The Lightning Room With Aaron Crippen

Aaron Crippen (translator of Mu Cao’s Sexual Abuse) beds his roots in the soft dirt of original voices.

1. First, I really want to know how to pronounce Mu Cao. I’m from the south and I read it as “Moo Cow” which I adore and am surely wrong about.

Lol how about Moo Tsow? “Moo” should be said with a falling tone, as in “Moo!” And “Cao” should be said with a dipping tone, so your voice almost drops out in the middle. It means “Grave Grass.”  Your Cow sensed it.

2. Do you write more when you’re translating another’s work? How does it affect your own writing?

Translating Chinese is very fruitful for me. Chinese writing has its roots in pictographs, so it’s very concrete. Concrete words are sensory and they signify nothing other than themselves: perfect for poetry. And Chinese has scale. One word can picture the horizon and the sun or a range of mountains. You can have multiple landscapes in a few syllables. Making a line of Chinese poetry is like laying a row of bricks, bricks of colored glass depicting scenes from Earth. Translating Chinese makes me want to write compact English poems, using words like bricks that can bear the weight of a whole poem, that signify nothing other than themselves. To this extent, translating Chinese energizes me and returns me to my Imagist roots.

3. Do you ever have sexual dreams or power dreams about the writers you translate?

The person of the writer is immaterial to the person of the translator. No.

4. What line or phrase gave you the most trouble in this poem? Are you a calm problem solver or do you throw childish fits or somewhere in-between?

The repeated lines about “gray memories” make me uncomfortable, because I don’t think the repetition resonates in English as much as it does in Chinese.

5. Tell us about something in poetry that bothers you?

I think there’s a conversational, common-man poet’s voice that has become so conventional. It limits the range of poetry. I’d like to see more range in the use of voice.

6. Talk about Mu Cao and his beautiful poetry. Make every sentence a new and unrelated thought.

Like Qian Zhongshu he takes us into the gut of China. Dirt is soft. You knew the pink flesh of the baby was in you, steak cooking inward, but you were afraid. He put the muck from the market floor on a glass slide: under a microscope it shows the amber webbing of a human iris. The future smells like a hot scalp.