Sinophonic English Poetry and Poetics

Book excerpt: Poetry. Asian & Asian American Studies. Music. The nearly supernatural nature of this groundbreaking work can be glimpsed in the book's title: YÍNGĒLÌSHI (Chanted Songs, Beautiful Poetry): SINOPHONIC ENGLISH POETRY AND POETICS. When read aloud, YÍNGĒLÌSHI (pronounced yeen guh lee shr) sounds like an accented pronunciation of the word "English," while the Chinese reader sees the Chinese characters for "chanted songs, beautiful poetry." Stalling coined this term (and "Sinophonic English") to give a positive name to an increasingly widespread variation of English created by combining the two dominant languages of globalization (Mandarin Chinese and English). With over 350 million English speakers in China (more than there are Americans alive) many of whom speak English by recombining existing Chinese sounds into English words and sentences, this new hybrid language is already overwhelmingly present, yet its aesthetic potential has not yet been explored. Stalling's book complicates any easy dismissal of so-called Chinglish by creating a genuinely uncanny poetry written entirely in Sinophonic English. Stalling rewrites a common English phrasebook into hauntingly beautiful Chinese poetry (which is all translated into English) that when sung, becomes an uncannily accented libretto, a story of a Chinese tourist's one-way journey into this interstitial language and its sonorous, if disastrous, consequences.