I’m a sucker for titles. I have problems with poems that titled “Untitled”. If the poet doesn’t know what he/she is talking about, then I won’t know either. Great titles stimulate the imagination. It creates a hunger in me to know more. Take The Chinese Bigamy of Mr. Winterlea—three fantasies in a flash, promiscuously displayed for the eager eyes.
I don’t know how many copies there are floating in space, but my guess is Henry McAleavy, the translator of this book, has fallen into obscurity. His delightful soap-opera account of intrigues between the English and the Chinese in the early 1900’s reminded me of the serial stories in the Hong Kong evening newspaper when I was growing up. The nightly short installment produced an inexplicable hunger as I went to school and listened to the drones. And if the papers were not delivered when I got home, I threw a fit.
