“Replying to the SubPrefect Zhang”
Collaborators’ Q&A: Translator Dawn McGuire: Yuko Adachi foregrounded the fisherman, which was a surprise, and very charming. It made me hear the song as an element of the poem that lingered on after the reading—nice! Artist Yuko Adachi: I did not want to overshadow the beauty of poem with my image I create, so I try to stay imaginative just like the poem without too much complication yet follow its depth of expression in simplicity.
Translator Dawn McGuire was born in Grayson, Kentucky, in the foothills of the Appalachians. “By day,” she is a San Francisco neurologist focusing on complications of HIV/AIDS. McGuire studied Chinese at Princeton University and Middlebury College. McGuire believes there is no such thing as “the” translation of a Tang Dynasty poem. Yuko Adachi is a Tokyo-born artist who was raised in Japan, Paris, London, and the United States of America. In 2007, her work was awarded best in painting for “Healing Power of Art” by Manhattan Art International. Today, she lives and works in Boston. Poet Wang Wei was the “Poet Buddha” of the extraordinary Tang Dynasty, when poetry was the center of Chinese cultural life.