#wong may

[likeniobe]

wong may, from a bad girl's book of animals, 1969 (reprinted 2023)

[lineandstanza]

Wong May

[kitchen-light]

In Chinese landscape painting, as well as in classical poetry, the perspective is that of time. In the West ― since the Renaissance, it has always been the perspective of space. A Chinese ideogram exudes time, each is a construct, the components are fitted together as an entity (infrangible). You learn to read or write by recognising the sign, a sign identical with the concept. The ideation of the idea. When read top down, the vertical line of words sink to a depth. It takes time with a couplet, you get two bars of time, barely touching, swaying from side to side. While the Indo-European alphabetic writing system dictates a line that reads left to right, extending horizontally, is an extension in space.

Wong May, from her Afterword, to “In the Same Light | 200 Tang Poems for Our Century”, translations by Wong May, Carcanet, 2022

[iphis26]

Grounded, the body, I fear, Is no phoenix,                             No hope for wings, singular or paired-off.

from “Untitled (3)” by Li Shangyin (tr. Wong May), in In the Same Light: 200 Tang Poems for Our Century

[alwaysalreadyangry]

Wong May, from Picasso’s Tears

(this was weirdly hard to photograph, sorry if it’s not very readable)

[the-end-of-art]

By Wong May.

[whatisthismommy]

Wong May, "Point of View", A Bad Girl's Book of Animals, 1969 via r/Poetry

[likeniobe]

wong may, from a bad girl's book of animals, 1969 (reprinted 2023)