A project of this scope and duration would not have been possible without the contributions and support of many people. First of all, I thank all the poets for allowing us to include their wonderful poems in this volume and all the translators, with whom I have enjoyed working throughout. I am equally grateful to Xiang Yang, who has been invaluable in the planning and coordination of the project and in providing much-needed material for the introduction.
To Jennifer Crewe, Editorial Director at Columbia University Press, and David Der-wei Wang, esteemed scholar and dear friend, I express my deepest appreciation for their enthusiastic support of the literature of Taiwan in general, and of this anthology in particular. Leslie Kriesel has done a fabulous job editing the volume; Ellen Yang, my assistant, has been most patient and conscientious; Ch’u Ko graciously provided the painting for the cover; John Balcom and Sophie Volpp read the first draft of the introduction and offered insightful comments. I thank them all.
Thanks also go to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in San Francisco and the Information Office in Taiwan for providing the map of Taiwan from The Republic of China Yearbook of 1999. Steve Bradbury’s translations of Xia Yu’s “The Ripest Rankest Juiciest Summer Ever” and “Written for Others” previously appeared in Fine Madness and Poetry International. Grateful acknowledgment is made to these journals for permission to reprint.
Last but not least, I thank Göran Malmqvist, who invited me to participate in this project in the summer of 1997. It has been a most memorable experience working together, as I have learned so much. Like poetry itself, a friendship formed in poetry never ceases to inspire and to enrich.
Michelle Yeh