The universe’s logic is simple: all celestial bodies can offer is
to explode. And explosions have a logic which is both simple and complex:
what scatters are small pieces of joy, ignorance, and pain. What reconciles
with the universe is the tranquility after—a vast calm, a sea wave that once was.
from “Extravaganza”
Ma Yan’s poems present a view of the world both fiercely intimate and coolly scientific.
Anna Metcalfe
The poetry of Ma Yan, born in 1979 in Sichuan province, has garnered increasing attention in China since her untimely death in 2010. She stands out as a poet who is simultaneously playful and fearless in her explorations of subjectivity and inter-subjectivity, writing intimate yet arresting poetry of great emotional breadth. Her work delves into questions of gender, mental health, death, desire, physicality and our personal interactions to show how they all shape the raw experience of existence. I Name Him Me is the first collection of her poetry to appear in English.
Ma Yan (1979–2010) was a Chinese Muslim born in Chengdu, Sichuan province. A writer of both poetry and prose, she graduated from Peking University in 2001 with a degree in classical Chinese literature. While in university she helped to organize the first Weiming Lake Poetry Festival, an annual event that continues to this day, and in 2000 co-founded the culture website, New Youth. In 2003 she returned to Chengdu. She passed away on December 28th, 2010 during a visit to Shanghai.
Ma Yan’s poems present a view of the world both fiercely intimate and coolly scientific. Single lines and lyrics slip effortlessly from the personal and exacting into something more global, generous, expansive, essayistic, and wise. Ma Yan’s poetry already has a loyal fanbase among artists and writers in China; this elegant and enviable translation brings her extraordinary voice to a whole new audience.
Anna Metcalfe
Ma Yan's poems are cosmopolitan, embodied, cynical, sexual, philosophical, and strongly individual. She speaks at the edge of her private language, bending her art to make small spaces for us to touch her unique mind and her conflicted, deep relationship to pain and desire. This voice is worth adding to your understanding of what language can do.
Nick Admussen
Ma Yan is a poet with a keen wit whose work is rich in feeling. Armed with a powerful sensitivity to the world and language, she probes and interrogates life and its environment. Her poems glitter like stars behind black cloud, solitary and sparkling.
Zhai Yongming
Ma Yan was a highly gifted writer whose premature death deprived the world of an important voice. Her poetry is edgy, sexy, feminist, heartfelt, erudite, and sometimes confounding. In Stephen Nashef’s sensitive and knowledgeable translation, Ma Yan’s voice comes through with admirable clarity: potent and vulnerable, humorous and dark, personal and global in equal measure. This is a book for all readers interested in the complexities—and tragedies—of the human experience.
Eleanor Goodman
Stephen Nashef currently lives in Beijing where he is studying for a PhD in Chinese Islamic philosophy. He was awarded a Henry Luce Chinese Poetry and Translation Fellowship in 2018 and his translations of Ma Yan’s poems have appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review.
ISBN: 978-1-946433-74-9
Trade Paperback
Perfect-bound. 160 pp, 4.75 x 7 in
Publication Date: October 01 2021
Distribution: Asterism Books (US)