All of the poems are very similar as they should be since they are translations of one original poem. However, they all focus on a different part of the wife’s story. Hence, each translation has a different title for the poem. The first translation is titled “The River-Merchant’s Wife: A Letter” by Ezra Pound and the second is titled “That Parting at Ch’ang Kan” by W.J.B. Fletcher. The first poem does bring up the wife’s sorrow over her husband’s absence but it has more of a mellow tone. She misses him but they are still married and she is writing him a letter as a way to communicate with him. The second poem focuses more on the actual separation of the two. In the last stanza, it says, “I sit and wail, my red cheeks growing old. / Early and late I to the gorges go, / Waiting for news that if they coming told” (26-8). In the first poem, I get the impression that the wife just wants the husband to let her know when he is coming back. In the second one, it’s as if the wife is hoping that the husband will be considerate enough to even do so. The disconnect between them is stronger.
There are stylistic differences between the various translations. Not all of them have the same number of stanzas and not all the poets separate the verses in the same way. For example, the third translation, “Ch’ang Kan” by Amy Lowell only has to stanzas whereas the fourth translation, “Two Letters From Chang-Kan-I” by Shigeyoshi Obata has seven stanzas. “A Song of Ch’and Kan” by Witter Bynner is the only poet to use ellipsis. Wai-Lyn Yip is the only poet that chose to number each verse of his translation, “Ch-ang-an Memories”.
Not all of the transitions use the same type of language. W.J.B Fletcher in “That Parting at Ch’ang Kan” uses an old-fashioned language that made reading and understanding the poem a different experience than reading the other translations. The use of exclamation points gives the poem a different tone. Amy Lowell’s decision to translate the poem into two stanzas made me feel like I was reading prose rather than poetry. I had a similar experience reading Witter Bynner’s piece because he only uses one stanza. Wai-Lim Yip’s poem stood out the most to me merely because the poet chose to number every individual line of the poem. I suppose it is not that big of a change to the storyline of the poem but it makes it look so different that I felt like I was reading a new poem.
My favorite translation of the poem would have to be “Ch’ang-an Memories” by Wai-Lim Yip. I like Yip’s stylistic decision number the lines of the poem. Most importantly, I appreciate how Yip questions the lady’s husband. No other poet does this. He writes, “If you have the faith of Wei-sheng. / Why do I have to climb up the waiting tower?” Here, the wife is questioning why she and her husband are handling their situation differently.