Redundant Negation: A Bilinguacultural Paradox
Since in both English and Chinese
Negatives can be redundant rather
Than negate anything or anybody
As in, say, I don’t know if it’s not busy
Or 好不热闹 [how not busy it is]
Why must English & Chinese speakers
Keep rejecting, denying, refusing, negating
Each other even when they use no
Negatives in their “speech acts,” especially
When they talk across the pacific?
*
Yuan Changming hails with Allen Yuan from poetrypacific.blogspot.ca. Credits include 12 Pushcart nominations & 15 chapbooks, most recently Sinosaure (Redhawk Publications). Besides appearances in Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline, Poetry Daily and nearly 2,000 others, across 49 countries, Yuan served on the jury, and was nominated, for Canada’s National Magazine Awards (poetry category).
