诗人、画家、作家。1954年生于北京。他是1979年北京先锋艺术团体“星星画会”和地下文学团体“今天”的成员。1985年从北京赴纽约并于1987年在纽约创立“一行”诗刊。严力出版过许多诗集和小说集，也办过数十次艺术展览。他的作品被翻译成各种文字。目前他定居上海和纽约。

Poet, painter, fiction writer, born in 1954 in Beijing, China. He is a member of a vanguard artist group "The Stars" founded in 1979 and an underground literary group "Today" in Beijing. As a poet, he is regarded as one of the members of the Misty Poets. He came to US in 1985 and founded quarterly journal Yi-Hang in New York in 1987. His poems have been translated into French, Italian, English, Swedish, Korean and German. He has held many exhibitions and published a number of books. He lives in Shanghai and New York.

Poet and translator. He is a co-translator of Frontier Taiwan(Columbia). His book of poems Man Cut in Wood was published by Valley Contemporary Press in 2003. He has lectured on the I CHING at the Temple School of Poetry (Walla Walla).

诗人和中英文翻译。 曾翻译了很多中国现代诗人的作品介绍给美国的诗坛，曾任美国西北部诗刊《诗庙》的编辑。他是美国哥伦比亚大学出版社出版的有关台湾的“前沿”一书的翻译者之一。他还曾在《寺庙》创办的诗人学校里讲课。他的个人诗集《刻在木头里的人》2003年由美国当代山谷出版社出版。

伊斯法罕

Esfahan

细雨绵绵之后
我在伊朗的伊斯法罕滑了一跤
屁股与裤腿上沾满了诗句
那里的文学传统具有这样的天气
诗句就像开心果在糖果中的比例
不过与任何其他地方一样
人们在浪漫的甜蜜中
也时常会在过于现实的社会里滑上一跤

我在伊斯法罕睡了与桥有关的一觉
那条扎洋德路河
竟然在沙漠中写出了这条最感人的诗行
我在桥上阅读了它的流畅
夜晚就不免把桥搭在了
两个国家都具有的诗歌传统上

细雨绵绵之后
我在伊朗的伊斯法罕喝了一杯
不是酒也不是茶
一杯酸到牙齿搬家之后
又搬回来的石榴汁
消化了我的疲乏
勾引出我更大的诗意
我想用石榴汁把下一本诗集的封面染红

我在伊斯法罕的出现
刷新了一次内心的丝绸之路
等于是蚕宝宝随着羊群再次走进漫长的地毯
我看见波斯与其新世纪的双手继续着编织
看见民众还在把生活的力量敲进传统的挂盘
我想诗歌韵律必然与手上的词语有关

A drizzling rain in Esfahan 
Caused me to trip and fall 
Spattering the seat of my pants with poetry, 
Such is the literary weather they have here, 
The proportion of poetic lines 
Is like pistachios in nougat candy. 
But like anywhere under weight of practical life 
Only people who walk in a sweet romantic fog 
Will stumble and fall in this special way. 

My sleep in Esfahan had to do with a bridge 
Written across the Zayandah-Rood River, 
A touching line of verse among desert sands. 
Atop that bridge I read the river's fluidity, 
And at bedtime I laid its span across the gap 
Between poetic traditions of two nations. 

After the rain in Esfahan I drank a cup 
Of something that was neither wine or tea. 
In the tartness of pomegranate juice 
My teeth were transported to an oasis 
And my weariness melted away. 
Because of the poetry I tasted in that juice 
I want pomegranates to dye my next book cover. 

Being in Esfahan helped me refurbish 
The Silk Road rolled up in my heart. 
I'll be a baby silkworm tagging after a flock of lambs 
Again we'll follow our journey's thread into a carpet. 
I see Persia continue her weaving, with a new 
century's hands 
And kettle-makers pounding life-force into 
time-honored shapes. 
It makes me think about poetic rhythms 
How they relate to words we have at hand.

谈论

Subject Of Discourse

                           
有人说如果不涉及宗教
你就无法谈论伊朗
但我认为
生命作为个体的事实更普及
不谈论每人都有的那几件外套
谈论文化的修炼
谈论如何在内心的沙漠上
多种几棵果树
谈论商场里买不到的
诗歌的技巧
谈论语言堕落成广告之后
吹牛的本领还能持续多久
谈论地图的意义在于分隔还是理解

如果没有漫长的历史
确实不能谈论伊朗
所以谈论丝绸之路上
被磨掉过的那些鞋底
谈论鞋底上沟通世界的道路继续泥泞
谈论上千年以来
在诗歌里凿出来的井
继续在为地球上的人类解渴

Some say you cannot talk about Iran
Without touching upon religion,
But the life-force behind each special person
Seems a more universal subject to me.
Let’s not talk about what robe you wear
But the tempering you get from your culture.
Let’s talk of how an orchard gets planted
In the desert of your heart,
Lets talk about skills of poetic utterance
Not available in any marketplace,
About how long the hype-machine can run
Once speech sinks to advertising’s purposes,
And if maps are made to explain or divide.

Of course history stretching far into the past
Is a precondition for talking about Iran,
So talk about shoes worn out along the Silk Road
And mud still sucking at our soles
Along the road to link up the world. 
Let’s talk of a well deeply drilled 
By over a millennium of poetry
That still can quench our earth-dwelling thirst. 

在伊朗之行中

While Traveling in Iran

在伊朗之行中
我没有看到广告上的美女
美女的定义不在于外露
在伊朗之行中
我离开酒精去思考杯盏的其他容量
思考红茶与石榴汁里面的文化度数
在伊朗之行中
吃到许多全球各地原料一样
但是烹调各异的菜肴
美味也没有离开过人类味觉的轨道
在伊朗之行中
摊位上讨价还价的双方
谁也没有因为宗教的原因
而超越金钱的游戏规则
在伊朗之行中
诗歌交流的握手多于其他的寒暄
语言中有潜流更有知识的速度
在伊朗之行中
肯定让我在纽约甚至中国放开的欲念
感到压抑
不同的极端考验着宗教与法律的智慧
在伊朗之行中
一些疑问虽然继续拷问着上层的伊朗
但也同样拷问着整个世界的下层
在伊朗之行中
我并没有看到地球之外的任何风景

On my trip to Iran
I saw no images of beauties on billboards,
Beauty’s definition does not lie in display.
On my trip to Iran, away from alcohol,
I considered other capacities in a cup,
The cultural proof of tea or pomegranate juice.
On my trip to Iran, 
Dishes made from familiar ingredients 
Treated me to yet-untasted deliciousness
With no derailment from mankind’s gustatory sense.
On my trip to Iran, at a market stall
Neither side of a hard-driven bargain
Was able, by virtue of religion,
To transcend the rules of money’s game.
On my trip to Iran, 
Handshakes were for poetry rather than pleasantry,
A latent current ran in the words, and with that
Came velocity of knowledge.
This trip was bound to give my desirous notions
That were unleashed in New York and even China
A sense of being repressed,
But there were different extremes to test my wisdom
In matters of religion and law. 
Along the way I saw upper-echelon Iran
Being interrogated by certain doubts,
But lower echelons in other parts of the world
Are being interrogated just as severely.
On my trip to Iran
I saw no scenery that got beyond planet Earth.