Stephen Boyanton PhD

Translator, Scholar, Writer

Welcome to my Site!

Taiwan Headshot croppedWelcome to my website. I am a writer, translator, and scholar. Browse around to find out more about the different types of work I do–writing, translation, and historical and literary research. Check out some samples of my work below and on the blog posts page, and visit my other blog, tenthousandli.me, to read more of my writing on travel, art, and life. If you have any questions, please contact me at s.boyanton@yahoo.com.

“America Used to be America (for Me)”: A Poem

November 5, 2018

I suppose this is my personal homage to Langston Hughes’s great poem, “Let America be America Again,” about which I’ve written on my other blog. Perhaps it’s also my personal update to that poem, my own “creative misprision”–to borrow Harold Bloom’s term–through which I’m trying to say where I think we are and where I … More “America Used to be America (for Me)”: A Poem

Breaking the “Great Taboo”: A Translation of Li Bai’s 李白 “Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon 月下獨酌”

October 19, 2018

There is a tradition among English-language translators of Chinese poetry to translate all Chinese poems as unrhymed free-verse. This tradition goes back at least as far as Ezra Pound–whose “translations” bear little resemblance to their originals–and is very much alive and kicking. So much so that I am borrowing Nathan Sivin’s term, “The Great Taboo,” … More Breaking the “Great Taboo”: A Translation of Li Bai’s 李白 “Drinking Alone Beneath the Moon 月下獨酌”

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