Hsia Yü is the author and designer of six volumes of groundbreaking verse, notably Pink Noise (2007), a bilingual collection of English-language poems and computer-generated Chinese translations printed on crystal-clear vinyl in pink and black ink, and, most recently, Poems, Sixty of Them (2011). “Dictation” is from her fourth collection, Salsa, her most popular volume to date. She lives in Taiwan, where she has a sizable popular following and co-edits the avant-garde journal and poetry initiative Xianzai Shi, otherwise known as Poetry Now. A full translation of Salsa, translated by Steve Bradbury, is forthcoming in a bilingual edition available from Zephyr Press in the early spring.