From A Standard Human Wish

Abstract

January–February 2012 | 37 detrimental under the Press Scrutiny Board—this was the start of many poets being imprisoned for their work, which still continues to this day). In a positive light, the Khit Por movement allowed for increased translation of key modernist texts. A principal translator of many anthologies over the years is Maung Tha Noe, who has produced Burmese versions of Apollinaire, Rilke, T. S. Eliot, and Mayakovsky’s “Cloud in Trousers” (interestingly , the most translated poem from the West in twentieth-century Burma). Maung Tha Noe’s signature anthology from 1968, In the Shade of a Pine Tree, is a keystone in Burmese literature, and increased access to good quality translations has been essential for Burmese literature to develop the national canvas. As leading poet Khin Aung Aye told me recently, “Translation is a way of climbing our own tree to get at the fruit.” In the 1990s, Khit Por began to suffer from a lack of originality, and a kind of mainstream homogenization of voice was seen to swamp Burmese literary magazines. This ushered in Zeyar Lynn and the latest tectonic shift of “language -oriented” and “postmodern” poetries in Burmese. While Maung Tha Noe has translated major poets to emerge from Khit San and Khit Por (like Aung Cheimt, Maung Chaw Nwe, and Tin Moe—all essential to the Burmese canon), Zeyar Lynn is possibly the finest poet writing in Burmese today and is a key translator in his own right—he’s published Burmese translations of Ashbery, Bernstein, and Szymborska, among others. Zeyar Lynn rejects sentimental poems and focuses more on poetry from the brain, a dramatic change in Burmese poetry and a necessary turning point. His translation work and his own poetry have influenced an exciting new generation of poets (like Moe Way, Pandora, and Maung Yu Py) who are part of a blog-poetry publishing revolution involving a crucial dialogue between the poets in Burma and the Burmese diaspora (which is in itself monumental—poets can finally evade the Press Scrutiny Board and its equivalents). Zeyar Lynn’s administering of Language poetry in Burma is often confused with the term postmodern , and the hybridization or pulling apart of these two delicate strands could yet bring about the next shift in a series of movements that have brought Burmese poetry into the twenty-first century. This could be the most exciting shift of all and unwittingly , perhaps, the political arena is not exempt from influencing change in this case. As poetry has taught us throughout history, in many countries, from the Russian moderns to the “Misty” poets of China, the more inventive poetry is in honoring and transforming tradition—while avoiding the political censor—the more extraordinary it can be. London / October 2011 Tin Moe’s first collection, Hpan-mi-ein (The glass lantern), won a national award. After the nationwide pro-democracy uprising in August 1988, he became an “Intellectual Committee” member of the National League for Democracy. As a result, in 1991 he was held without charge for six months and then confined to four years in the infamous Insein prison. Just before another possible arrest in 1999, he managed to escape Burma after obtaining a passport under his lesser-known real name, U Ba Gyan. He then took political asylum in the United States and died in Los Angeles in 2007, the author of eighteen collections of poetry. from A Standard Human Wish Tin Moe The mumbo-jumbo It’s not for me, I don’t beat Around the proverbial bush In the middle of a magniloquent forest. The right man in the right Place, I am a recluse who Lives deep in the jungle where Trees of knowledge bear fruit. I seek out and query the so-called Righteous paths in each and every book I scour for solutions that might turn My uncertainties into certainties. I don’t measure life’s depth Via a single moment, even in blurred Dreams, I don’t mix hogwash with reality I don’t wallow in the mire like you or go in For poker thrills, I know mind from matter I am no mediocre penpusher With a mu’s worth of letters...