ABSTRACT
This essay starts from the premise that a poem is a translational process: always, not just once it has been translated in the conventional sense. From there, the author complicates and reorients the authenticity claims that have been built into the discourse around both the ancient Shijing and Chinese migrant worker poetry today. He argues that these two poetries’ many moments of intralingual, interlingual, and cultural translation constitute and reiterate each other – and that the recognition of this should place proper attention on the work and the art involved in each.
