Call Her Suoma
Rent from DeepDyve- Call Her Suoma
Call her Suoma*in the name of love we sharein the last, this, and next life.Love her—love her breathtaking color from blooming,the traces she leftin the wind the rain the scorching sun.Nothing disdains her beauty: she is purelike ice jadebut she is not just pretty and frail.Her sonorous voice comes from the air,the revolving stream, the soil.Love her.And embrace her barren bodylike heaven and earthand everything that grows on earthwith natural birth and deathin the world even though the worlddoesn't care where the wind blows,where you're from what you are or where you're going.She has her own garden, her old dreamand her clearly sounding name—Call her Suoma out loudlike calling yourself. [End Page 53]
Jike Bu 吉克·布 (Jike Ayibujin) was born and grew up in Xichang, Yi Autonomous Prefecture of Sichuan province, in 1986. She was the first Yi woman awarded a master's degree in art. She began publishing poems while in college and has become known as one of the best Yi poets of the younger generation.
Ming Di 明迪 is a Chinese poet based in the U.S. She attended Boston College and Boston University, where she taught Chinese. She has published six books of poetry in Chinese along with a collaborative translation, River Merchant's Wife (2012). She co-translated The Book of Cranes by Zang Di (2015) with Neil Aitken, and Empty Chairs: Selected Poems by Liu Xia (2015) with Jennifer Stern, which was a finalist for the 2016 Best Translation Book Award. She edited and co-translated New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry (2013) and New Poetry from China 1917–2017 (2019). In 2013 and 2014, she received Henry Luce Foundation fellowships. A co-founder of Poetry East West journal, she serves as the China editor for Poetry International Rotterdam. She has also translates from English into Chinese, most recently Observations by Marianne Moore (2018).
Footnotes
* Yi name of azalea flower; also the most common name for women in the Yi region.
