46 Ways of Looking at Blue

Linda Plaisted

Poetry, said Robert Frost, is what gets lost in translation.

A poem, or its translation, is never "right." It is always the expression of an individual reader's experience at that particular moment in each life.

"As no individual reader remains the same, each reading becomes a different - not just another - reading. The same poem cannot be read twice."

The title of this image is a tribute to a tiny little volume, a mere sliver really that I read in college. It has stayed with me all these years. I often think on the poetry of Wang Wei when I am out photographing nature.

"Nineteen Ways of Looking at Wang Wei: How a Chinese Poem is Translated" contains a simple four-line poem, over 1200 years old, written by Wang Wei (c. 700-761 AD), a man of Buddhist belief, known as a painter and calligrapher in his time. The book gives the original text in Chinese characters and numerous other translations in several languages, most notably by Octavio Paz the Mexican poet who received the 1990 Nobel Prize for literature.

One translation:

Empty mountains
I see no one

but I hear echoes
of someone's words

evening sunlight
shines into the deep forest

and is reflected
on the green mosses above

Make your own translation

More of my work at www.manymuses.com

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