Silent Classics

Silent Classics is a series of translated foreign poetry launched by Horizon Books (a Century Wenjing imprint under Shanghai People's Publishing House) in 2013. Planning began around 2010, driven by the sense that modern foreign poetry had long been obscured in China: some poets were never introduced, others only sporadically translated, neither systematically nor completely, so they struggled to reach readers. The series therefore does not aim to be a comprehensive poetry-history mosaic, but selects book by book those poets and works well established in the Western poetic canon yet faintly heard in the Chinese-speaking world. The name "Silent" carries two meanings: first, poets overlooked by the market and by reading attention; second, the little-known creative facets of celebrated masters. Readers thus encounter the Romanian avant-garde poet Sorescu, the French poet Reverdy, the Russian poet Pasternak, but also D. H. Lawrence, famed as a novelist, and Pessoa, writing as a "minor clerk," as well as Louise Glück, later a Nobel laureate. The first set comprises The Ship of Death, The Blank of Water, The Second Birth, and The Injured Air. Subsequent volumes include High Windows, The Motion and Stillness of Dover, The Alloy of Moonlight, Until the World Reflects the Deepest Need of the Soul, Winter Recipes from the Collective Farm, and Tired of Love. The series maintains a pace of selecting two or three new titles and releasing two or three each year; the design has been upgraded several times, and it has become one of the longest-running and most recognizable foreign poetry series in China.