Asymptote Fall 2015 Issue

The newest issue of Asymptote Journal came out a couple weeks ago. I haven't made it through the whole issue yet. It can be hard to get through a full issue sometimes. I'm generally unfamiliar with many (read: all) of the author so I find myself reading a story (or poem or whatever else) and then falling into a blackhole of research about the author and if they have a twitter or what other works they've written and where they're from and who their translator is and if they have a twitter or what other works have they translated and...you get the point. And that point is these stories, these interviews, these essays, these are all great jumping off points to learn about new ideas, new works of art, new cultures, all around the world.

Take for instance, the poem 'Common Night' by Uyghur poet Merdan Ehet'éli. The Uyghurs are an ethnic group from Eastern and Central Asia, primarily in the far Western region of China called Xinjiang. Their culture isn't typical to what one normally thinks of Chinese as they are traditionally an Islamic group, and tend to have more in common culturally with neighboring countries (Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan) than with Beijingers and Shanghainese.

Merdan (born 1991) is already an accomplished writer and translator, having translated works from Chinese to Uygher (and vice versa). He's part of what's called the Nothingism school of Uygher poetry. Take the opening lines of the poem for example: "This is a night made from words" and contrast those with a later line: "This is a night that no elegy, ode, rain, or beam of light shall ever reach." This seeming contradiction is just another facet of a common night. The Xinjiang region that is home to Uyghers is fairly isolated from the rest of China, but as translator Joshua Freeman notes in an interview, "a lot of what’s really vibrant and interesting in Uyghur poetry right now is happening primarily on the web, and even on phone messaging apps."