Middle-Aged Man's Self-Portrait

poems by Yan An

translated 

by Chen Du & Xisheng Chen

 

17 pages, paper, staple-bound

Toad Press, 2025. $6.00

poems by Yan An

translations by Chen Du & Xisheng Chen

cover art by Yichao Sun

You can purchase a copy of Middle-Aged Man's Self-Portrait on Etsy or from submittable.

A prominent poet in contemporary China, Yan An is the author of 15 poetry books, including Rock Arrangement, which won him The Sixth Lu Xun Literary Prize, one of China’s top four literary prizes. The winner of various national awards and prizes, he is also a Vice President of the Poetry Institute of China, a Vice President of the Shaanxi Writers Association, a member of the National Committee of China Writers Association, and the head and Executive Editor-in-Chief of the literary journal Yan River, one of the oldest and most famous literary journals in Northwestern China. In English, his full-length poetry collection, A Naturalist’s Manor, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen and published by Chax Press, was one of four titles shortlisted for the 2022 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, administered by the American Literary Translators Association. The poems in this chapbook are from Yan An’s full-length poetry collection Rock Arrangement.

Chen Du is a voting member of the American Translators Association and an expert member of the Translators Association of China with a Master’s Degree in Biophysics from Roswell Park Cancer Institute, SUNY at Buffalo, and a Master’s Degree in Radio Physics from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. In the United States and a few other Western countries, she has published 150+ English translations, poems, and essays in 50+ literary journals.

Xisheng Chen, a Chinese American, is an ESL grammarian, lexicologist, linguist, translator, and educator. A translator for over three decades, he has published translations in various fields in newspapers and journals in China and abroad. He is also a freelance translator for JTG, Inc., Reston, VA for the translation project for the US Department of Justice.

 

diamonds & rust

poems by Catalina Vergara 

translated from the Spanish

by Tiffany Troy

unpaginated, paper, staple-bound

Toad Press, 2025. $6.00

poems in Spanish by Catalina Vergara

English translations by Tiffany Troy

cover art by Magdalena Vergara

You can purchase a copy of diamonds & rust on Etsy or from submittable. 

In this tremendous chapbook, Mars is crummy, rusty, but alive, the planet confronting its feminine counterpart. The lyrical subject is enigmatic (masculine), or rather, enigmatic (feminine). It slips between lowercase letters, between caesuras and enjambments, leaping between silences and blank spaces behind the melancholy of romantic or emotional misunderstandings..... Vergara contrasts the pristine, clear, naked transparency of the diamond with its companion fragility, with the dirty, dark, and discomforting texture of rust. We all desire diamonds. No one wants rust, or do we? /  En esta tremenda obra, Marte siendo desierto, oxidado, pero con vida, enfrentado el planeta a su contraste femenino. El sujeto lírico es enigmático, o más bien enigmática. Se cuela entre las minúsculas y los desbordes de la pausa versal y los encabalgamientos, salta entre los silencios y los espacios en blanco tras la melancolía de ese desencuentro amoroso/afectivo..... Vergara contraste entre lo prístino, claro, desnudo de la transparencia en el diamante y su fragilidad, versus la textura sucia, oscura y poco deseada del óxido. Todos queremos diamantes, pero nadie quiere el óxido ¿o sí? - Blanca Hernández, author of Enmirlada 

Catalina Vergara is a writer who was born in Santiago de Chile in 1998. She studied Creative Literature and majored in Education at the Universidad Diego Portales. diamonds & rust' was written in a poetry workshop taught by Raúl Zurita. She published a science fiction novel titled Vulnicura through Aurea Ediciones. Catalina explores themes that stretch reality and the limits of what is perceptible through an occult and queer framework.

Tiffany Troy is a poet, translator, and critic. Based in Flushing, Queens, her poems revolve around her dreams and the dreams she carries. Tiffany is the author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]) and the chapbook When Ilium Burns (Bottlecap Press). She is Managing Editor at Tupelo Quarterly, Associate Editor of Tupelo Press, Book Review Co-Editor at The Los Angeles Review, Assistant Poetry Editor at Asymptote, and Co-Editor of Matter.

 

Reviews & Praise 

Diamonds and Rust es, en definitiva, un poemario que interroga el deseo y la forma en que lo habitamos: como carencia, como fantasía, como forma de contemplación. Explora esa línea limite donde el otro amado puede volverse tan lejano que termina por convertirse en figura artística, y no en presencia viva. Y, sin embargo, también hay en estos versos una necesidad entre líneas de ser tocado, de romper la distancia, de ser deseado también, de romper con la poesía que requiere de decoro para transmitir una emoción tan compleja como lo es el amar.
- Franco Fuentes, Asco Zine

diamonds & rust is, ultimately, a chapbook that interrogates desire and the way we inhabit it: as an absence, as fantasy or as a form of contemplation. It explores that limit where the beloved other can become so distanced from the self that they transform into an artistic figure rather than a living presence. And yet, between these lines also exists a need to be touched, to break the distance, to also be desired, and to break with the decorum poetry requires to convey an emotion as complex as to love. - Franco Fuentes, Asco Zine

The sixth dimension is essentially the “multiverse” – it contains all possibilities. The poet imagines a kind of fulfillment in the silence of dream that spells out the essence of the sixth dimension. In a note, Vergara explains her drive behind diamonds & rust, “El poemario es una sutura entre mi dolor, el de Baez y el silencio de aquellos que sufren por un amor imposible, una relacion corosiva.” (“The collection of poems is a suture between my pain, Baez’s pain, and the silence of those who suffer from an impossible love, a corrosive relationship.”) Re-written silence means suffering may be redeemed in another world, a parallel universe. Call it wish-fulfillment or liken it to the 18th century German “Sturm und Drang” movement with its emphasis on intense emotion, the impulse is sincere, searing.- Charles Rammelkamp, London Grip 
 

2025 Chapbook Series available for pre-order

 

The Toad Press 2025 chapbook series includes 3 fantastic selections: 

• diamonds & rust, poems by Catalina Vergara, translated by Tiffany Troy (expected publication in June 2025)
• Middle-Aged Man's Self-Portrait, poems by Yan An, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen (expected publication in July 2025)
• Leaving the Beach, poems by Ariane Dreyfus, translated by Elaine Terranova (expected publication in August 2025)

You can reserve your copy of these excellent chapbooks and order all three titles today! Chapbooks will be shipped as they become available. 

Pre-order ($19 for all 3 2025 chapbooks, includes shipping to US addresses) today from submittable.

Questions, or looking for other options? Email us at toadpresschaps[at]gmail.com 

Garden Party

 

 

 

 

This spring we're celebrating Toad Press chapbooks with a garden party reading featuring translators Molly Bendall, Béatrice Mousli, and Naoko Fujimoto. You can participate from afar by purchasing a bundle of these 3 Toad Press titles! 

• In the Gloom on the Left, selections of Joyce Mansour, translated by Molly Bendall. Toad Press/Veliz Books, August 2022

• The Tears by Olivia Rosenthal, translated from the French by Béatrice Mousli (17 pages, paper, staple bound. 2015).

• 09/09 Nine Japanese Female Poets / Nine Heian Waka, poems by Sei Shōnagon, Fujiwara no Teishi, Murasaki Shikibu, Kōkamonin no Bettō, Izumi Shikibu, Koshikibu no Naishi, Ukon, Daini no Sanmi, and Empress Shōshi; translations, original essays, and drawings by Naoko  Fujimoto. Published byToad Press/Veliz Books, August 2024
  

Please note: For US mailing addresses only. 

 

$19 include shipping! 10 bundles are available; Garden Party bundle offered during the month of April 2025 only. 

Hop over to Submittable to purchase a Garden Party bundle: https://toadpress.submittable.com/submit