The Best American Poetry

China in A Day [by Matthew Thorburn]

Philip Larkin once remarked that he would like to visit China, but only if he could come home the same day. (I could do another week here on funny and/or curmudgeonly things he said.)

He also said in his Paris Review interview that writing a poem was, for him, a way “to construct a verbal device that would preserve an experience indefinitely by reproducing it in whoever read the poem.” (As coldly scientific as that sounds, he of course also wrote some of the most beautiful and moving verbal devices in 20th century English. And he did go on at least one overnight trip abroad, to Germany, or so I’ve heard.)

Having written and now recently published a book of poems about traveling in China, Iceland and Japan, I’ve often thought of Uncle Phil (as I think of him) and these remarks of his when someone asks me what my book is about, or especially why I wrote it. But to tell you what I tell people, I first have to share another quote.

Jasper Johns said that sometimes life gets so close we can’t see it anymore. Small children and the outrageously wealthy aside, who doesn’t sometimes feel like that? Work or school – or both – plus getting there and home again, taking care of kids (if you went against Uncle Phil's advice and have some yourself), cooking and cleaning and hopefully somewhere in there sleeping… It’s hard not to get caught up in the busy-ness of everyday living and feel that life – real life, the good life, whatever cool thing your friends are doing (and posting pictures of on Facebook) and you’re not – is rushing past you in a blur.

Next thing you know, you’re one of those people who say things like, “I can’t believe it’s already Wednesday” or “Where did the summer go?”

Whereas traveling in another country can have the exact opposite effect. You notice everything – or try to. Because everything is new and different and strange (mostly in a good way). For instance, going to the bathroom in Japan can be an adventure in itself: one involving high-tech toilets and a quick change of footwear. Ordering dinner in Iceland can be too: do I feel like whale pepper steak or is tonight more of a fermented shark kind of night? Should I try the puffin? Or plokkfiskur, perhaps?

Finding yourself in another country is like putting on a new pair of glasses. Everything snaps into focus. Everything seems brighter and sharper. 

Which is, of course, like writing a poem – or like what it takes to write a poem. Traveling and writing poems are both about finding your way, in all the different senses of that phrase. And in both cases you have to pay attention.

I think it was Jordan Davis who once said that’s the biggest thing: you have to be present. Show up and pay attention. That’s the job, you poets – and you travelers. And notice how this thing connects to this other thing. How they are – or aren't – like the things you know back home. How this reminds you of that.

And now we’re making metaphors. And now the world just got a little smaller.  

I wrote poems about being in China to create verbal devices that would enable me to go back to China, if only for a day or an hour, and only in my imagination – and so that (so my hope goes) interested readers could do the same. What I wound up with on the page is a mix of memory and imagination, of course, and so not exactly the China I set foot in some years ago.

And interestingly the best part for the poet (for this one, anyway) wasn’t that finished verbal device, but the process of building it, how the words – or the search for the right ones – kept spurring me on to remember more, imagine more, to go back there again and again.

And finally it’s worth remembering too that one of Larkin’s most beautiful poems is about a journey (again, in all the senses), albeit a domestic one. Listen to him read “The Whitsun Weddings,” which picks up steam slowly but surely, like the train the poet travels in--

That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

--and then ends with the most beautiful rain.

The Politics of "Don't Speak" [by Eleanor Goodman］

As everyone has heard by now, this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to the Chinese novelist Mo Yan. Nearly any selection would create controversy—from sour grapes to complaints about literary quality to accusations of political maneuvering on the part of the Nobel committee. This year, what strikes me is the substantial difference between what is being said in the US about the choice, and what is being said in China.

Outside of Chinese literature specialists, the major reaction in the US seems to be: “Huh?” Few have heard of, let alone read, Mo Yan’s work, even though six of his novels have been translated into English, with two more forthcoming. For a Chinese writer, that is a remarkably high rate of translation. And therein lies part of the trouble.

In China, Mo Yan is a prominent literary figure, largely because of Zhang Yimou’s adaptation of his novel Red Sorghum Clan into a movie (renamed Red Sorghum), but partly because he is so widely translated. Access to the rest of the world, and in particular, the English-speaking world, means potential fame and money and a shot at international prizes like the Nobel. That alone can lead to bitterness among other authors whose work has not received the same attention from the West. Mo Yan is also well known for his ability to toe the official line, and this creates resentment in a political climate that necessitates a delicate balancing act between expression and self-censorship. Mo Yan is a member of the official Writer’s Association, from which he draws a salary. For Chinese writers, and for China specialists in the West, ‘official’ is a fraught term. It smacks of obeisance to the Communist regime, and a kowtowing to government strictures on what is allowed and what is not. For those who risk everything to speak out against the political system—writers like Liu Xiaobo, Ma Jian, and Liao Yiwu, or the artist Ai Weiwei—this shows a lack of moral courage. Since the awarding of the Nobel, the Chinese internet has exploded with complaints of this type. Mo Yan the stooge, Mo Yan the coward, Mo Yan the inferior self-limited writer.

Yet the Chinese press as well as many critics and readers are behind him. And Mo Yan does address a range of controversial issues. His novels are by no means simple peons to the greatness of the Communist party, or, like the worst of ‘official’ literature, Brave-Communist-Party-Member-Saves-Village tales. What tends to protect Mo Yan from Party censure (although his work at various times has, in fact, been censored or criticized by the government) is that he sets his work in the past—i.e., he says nothing about the current political regime—and he uses a style of ‘hallucinatory realism’ to address issues that if tackled head-on might lead to Party condemnation. Having a tadpole as a narrator provides a certain amount of protection. The Communist Party will often ignore allegory and extended metaphor, so long as it doesn’t cross a certain, constantly changing, line. Liu Xiaobo, the other recent Chinese Nobel laureate (the one never mentioned in the Chinese press), wasn’t jailed for his potentially incendiary poetry; the government just cared about his directly political writings. 

And now the Chinese government has a laureate it can promote. But with such recognition comes a degree of dangerous power. Mo Yan has just said at a news conference that he hopes Liu Xiaobo will win his freedom soon (although he also said he ‘doesn’t understand’ Liu’s political essays), which is an embarrassment for a government greatly concerned with keeping face. Perhaps Mo Yan will continue to make cautious political statements, perhaps not. Either way, he is now, whether he likes it or not, a political figure, in China even more than in the West.

----Eleanor Goodman 顾爱玲

(Ed note:  Eleanor Goodman is  a Research Associate at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, where she is working on a book-length translation project. Eleanor  writes fiction, poetry, and essays, and translates contemporary Chinese literature. Her work has appeared widely in publications such as PN Review, Fiction, Pathlight, The Guardian, Pleiades, Acumen, Perihelion, New Delta Review, The Los Angeles Review, and on this blog. Find out more about Eleanor Goodman here.)

ON TRANSLATING FROM THE CHINESE by Martin Stannard

Before you ask the obvious question, here’s the answer: yes, it’s really [insert expletive] difficult.

But a while  ago, having at that point been living and working in China three years, I sort of instinctively felt that part of what I should be doing (as if I ever know what I’m doing) had to be to tackle some of the classical Chinese poetry. Not reading it, because I’d done a bunch of that and it’s easy enough to do (in translation), but involving oneself at a different level, by which I mean trying my hand at translation. And it’s a poet kind of thing to do (isn’t it?) because it fills the gaps when you aren’t writing poems of your own.

I was learning Chinese  – I still am, in a limited way, and it’s not at all easy. But at that point I knew enough of how the language worked, and had at least a decent amount of experience in China and of the culture, to feel that having a crack at the poems in the original wouldn’t be a total waste of time. I’d always figured (and this is in no way an original insight) the big and obvious problem with translation was the inability of the translator to convey the cultural aspect of the poem: that is, the associations and allusions that are almost always going to be beyond the foreigner at the deepest, most significant level. From the ancient Chinese that comes with bells on, to coin a phrase. Even the Chinese teachers and students I spoke to acknowledged that they don’t get some of the stuff in those old poems: the allusions and associations are lost except to a few scholars, and the smartest of readers often has simply to shrug and say they know the poem is great but that line, no, sorry, I don’t have a clue what it means, and even when it's explained they still don’t really get it because the deeper meanings simply don’t mean or resonate now in the way they once did. Add to all this the inevitable loss of the sound and tone and music of the poem – and Chinese is a tonal language – and it may seem like a lost cause. But it isn't.

The first poems I translated were by Li Bai, (right) and I had the assistance of one of my Chinese student friends, and a couple of Chinese websites that explicated some of the more abstruse points of the poetry for us. Then, for reasons that don’t matter here, I kind of let things drift, and did no translations for quite a long time. But in late 2010 I got back into it, armed with a knowledge of the language somewhat better than before. I still needed help with some of the more obscure parts of the poems, and the finer points of language in the originals are often beyond dictionaries, but one can only hope that the results would at least be acceptable to the guys who wrote the things in the first place. I know one should probably get very academic and technical about all this, but it occurred to me that in layman's terms it was also very important that one should come up with a poem that, if it were possible, the bloke who wrote the original would think was okay – that you could, for example, sit down with Li Bai over a glass of wine and talk it through and you'd both understand what you were about as poets, and that you'd come close. And those guys liked their wine, too, which might help…..

My version of the much translated Li Bai poem, 
Drinking Alone Under the Moon

Alone among the flowers drinking wine
I raise my cup and invite the bright moon
come drink with me;
                        my shadow would make three.
But the moon's no drinker, and my shadow,
it just follows me like a shadow does.
Though we are only together like this
for a while, it should be enjoyed, like youth.
The moonlight moves along in time with me;
we dance
            and it gets a little crazy.                                           
Sober we're happy; drunk I have lost you.
If only our friendships were as constant
as the River of Stars is unchanging.

doesn't do much that's different from many earlier versions other than use an English I feel comfortable with, which is slightly different from the English of, for example, an American poet translating the poem 60 or more years ago.

One of my favourite little poems is Red Beans (sometimes called "One Hearted", which sounds un-English to my ear) by Wáng Wéi (right). My version is very different from some I've seen:  

The red bean grows in the south country.
In Autumn its branches are filled with pods.
Gather as many as you can and think of me
thinking of you reaping the red bean harvest.

In the Chinese, it's    

紅豆生南国

春来发幾枝

原君多采擷

此物最相思

and those last two characters – the word 相思 (xiāng sī) – have (or has) two meanings: it's a colloquial name for red beans, but literally it means "to be thinking of each other". I think that's so cool.

 * A selection of my translations of the poems of Li Bai, together with an earlier version of this essay, will be published in Staple 74.

Not Exactly E.R. by Martin Stannard

I'm sure you're not interested in my health, but I've been troubled for the past couple of months by the remnants of a cold, remnants that consist of what I took to be a minor infection on my chest. My nights have been troubled by a cough, and my days by the unpleasantness of slightly congested sinuses. I don't like to use the word "phlegm" because it's disgusting. Anyway, a few days ago I eventually got fed up with it, and decided to go see a doctor. We have a clinic on campus, which is good for minor ailments, but my friend Zhang Yan told me she thought they weren't up to potentially life-threatening pulmonary diseases unless I wanted to get one (she has a sense of humour) and offered to accompany me to the big hospital downtown where, she said, a friend of hers is a doctor. Friends are very important here: they're often another way of saying "shortcut". 

   Zhong Da Wu Yuan, (No.5 Hospital), Zhuhai I should mention, in case you're wondering, that while Chinese hospitals and dentists can look more life-threatening than any disease or problem you might actually have, the opposite is the case, although I also have to say that the only photograph I've been able to find of this particular hospital does make it look pretty unappetizing.  But I've had minor medical treatment in China and it's been fine, and I've also had extensive and highly effective (and painless) dental work at a fraction of the cost of similar treatment in England. I have no complaints at all, only praise. The dental adventures also came with the added amusement of people wandering in off the street to have a look around. One old guy came in and after taking a look inside my mouth sat down next to me and read his newspaper. He gave me the impression he thought I was in his chair. I don't have a photo of that particular dentist's, but the picture here gives you some idea: it's on the street, and very open to anyone who fancies wandering in. There's none of that hygiene nonsense…..
But back to the hospital. This being China, and the doctor being Zhang Yan's friend, there was no question of going to out-patients' and waiting around for hours. Oh no. We went straight into in-patients', up to the doctors' room where a dozen or so doctors were sat around chatting – it was their lounge, I think – and I was examined in there. From behind his surgical mask the doctor said I had no serious problem, but he sent me for an x-ray anyway, presumably to check everything was where it should be.

We  were told we'd need to wait for an hour while the photos were developed. Waiting at the same time were three policemen keeping company with someone who I think it'd accurate to describe as a criminal prisoner. One could tell he was that because he was shackled hand and foot like those guys you see in the movies shuffling towards somewhere dismal. He was wearing just a t-shirt, shorts and sandals, this being August in the tropics, and the  "quaint" part was that he had newspaper stuffed down inside the shackles that were around his ankles to stop them from chafing his bare skin. I was tempted to take a photo, but I reminded myself of where I was (China) and thought better of it. Thinking about it later, it occurred to me that this being China also meant that there was probably a quite good chance that if I'd asked to take a photo they'd have let me. We'd have probably had a group picture with everyone too, me and convict guy included,  all smiling happily. But I think playing it safe was the best option; I don't like to push my luck too far.

The x-rays were delayed beyond the promised hour, and so we went back to doctor friend and told him we had somewhere we needed to be and it wasn't a hospital; he dropped everything and went to the radiology department in person and got the pictures. China mostly works on this system: unfairness, and cutting corners if you've got the power to do so. It turned out everything in my chest was where it should be, and we proceeded to jump another couple of queues to get my medication quickly and, thank you for asking, I seem to be a lot better. The photographs of my lungs are on public display in my bathroom. I suppose that's not that public, but you're welcome to drop in and inspect them, should you  be passing by. if you're not in the area I'm including them here, and claim to be the only poet on this site to show you some of their inner workings.

Looking at China, from China (by Martin Stannard)

My university, above, but I don’t think you can see me.

 I live in China. I came here in 2005, and except for the 2007/8 academic year when I returned to England to take up a Writing Fellowship that had been held open for me I've worked at the same university  all that time. I came here as an ESL teacher, but now teach a variety of subjects, including literature courses. One day back at the beginning of 2005 I received two emails: one was from my youngest son, who was then in Costa Rica having a good time, and another was from a friend who was in China teaching English and also having a good time. I was in England, comfortable enough, but suddenly I felt like I was missing out on something that had to do with it's a big world out there; six months later I was here. What I knew about China at that point you could've comfortably etched on to a fingernail.

I'm not going to try and explain what it's like here. The first time I returned to England and everyone was asking me to describe what China was like I realized I couldn't do it. You can show the photos, tell the anecdotes, but something is always missing: the words "it's a different culture" don’t go anywhere near it. No matter how many times I say the people are wonderful, friendly and open, that the students are a delight to teach, that invitations to their homes to see their town and meet the family are endless, and how not everyone eats rice all the time …. to be honest, after six years I'm kind of bored even mentioning those things, because this is where I live now and it's all normal.

 What is pretty true, though, is that most "foreigners" (by which I mean Westerners) living here for any substantial length of time probably should own up to a certain sense that they're escaping something, albeit in differing degrees. Many, particularly younger people, come here for "the experience", for sure, but even then it can easily become more than that. Foreign teachers especially enjoy a fairly privileged existence. Usually paid quite well by Chinese standards, and therefore having more than enough disposable income, they also benefit from the reverence the Chinese have for "the teacher".

But it's a bubble, and an escapist bubble at that. Some measure of guilt comes from living comfortably in a place where there are very serious issues, but we're 99.9 per cent unaffected by them, and we're also half a world away, literally, from problems at home, wherever home may be. We're privileged: you can't really claim that not being able to use Youtube and Facebook constitute major incursions into the quality of life, even though you know there's an important principle involved. And anyway, you can get those things if you really want them. The technology exists. When I read in the English papers that phrase "internet censorship in China" I can't help but almost smile: I'm not denying curbs on freedom exist here, nor the horrors that undoubtedly go along with that; all I'm saying is that the general everyday reality is somewhat different from what that hackneyed journalist phrase suggests. When the furore over the Nobel Peace Prize and Liu Xiaobo erupted, it didn’t make the Chinese TV news, or the newspapers, but in class one day I saw a student reading a photocopy of the story in The Economist.

All this is far from simple, and I've probably already upset a whole bunch of people who live a long way away and know more about human rights and being liberal than I do.

On a slightly different tack, one of the most disturbing issues I've come across is one that affects lots of young people here: China is a country where Confucian philosophy and "tradition" is still very strong and influential – it's "part of the culture" –  and one aspect of that is of course the importance of family. So many young people here are faced with a problem largely beyond the western experience: brought up to respect family values and obligations, they find themselves studying and sitting endless exams to get a good job (that probably isn’t there) to earn money so they can one day both repay (literally, in some cases: with money) their parents for what they've been given but also care for them in their old age in a way that certainly doesn’t happen in my country. If you're thinking "Well, we care about our parents too….." believe me, this is a whole different ball-game.

It's perfectly normal here for young people to be faced with a future that involves a marriage more or less arranged by their parents, having children, and then eventually living with aged parents, and pretty much putting them first in ways that would have been and still are frankly impossible for me, as a Westerner, someone who left home at 19, to comprehend. For many young people here that poses no major issues, because this is what happens, it's what life is. But for many others it tears them apart, because while they've been raised with those expectations all their lives and will continue to live with them, they've also learned "western" independence and the desire to move away and do not what their parents and "society" expect, but what they need as free-thinking people. Western culture is a big part of their lives, and this is "modern China". But in very significant ways it's still old China. One girl I know – I say girl, but she's a woman of 24, a graduate, and very smart, with excellent English  – seriously feels like she's living a life and is destined to for ever have a life she doesn’t want, a Chinese life lived for other people, not for herself. She's told me she feels doomed. Her parents wheel out prospective husbands on a regular basis, and  I know her well enough to know she wasn't exaggerating how she feels. And I know other bright and intelligent young Chinese who are desperate (and when I say desperate, I mean desperate:) at having to make a choice that in reality is no choice at all: the parents always win.

Boston's Chinatown: Not Just Red Lanterns [by Eleanor Goodman]

If you’ve spent any time in China, it’s easy to slam the Chinatowns of America. They’re just a lot of red lanterns and restaurants with Americanized Chinese food. Yeah, there are Chinese people around, but people don’t really live there. It’s all for tourists and people who want to pretend to be somewhere exotic.

I admit that this was my attitude toward Boston’s Chinatown, the third largest in the country, at least until this past Saturday, when I spent half a day just walking around the neighborhood. As someone involved in translation and the Chinese community in general, I thought I knew the area pretty well. I mean, I’ve eaten hundreds of meals there, hung out in the square by the gate where the old men gather to gossip and play chess, bought DVDs in the sketchy basement stores, even gone to the travel agency where the agents only speak Chinese and can get you surprising discounts on plane tickets to Shanghai.

But this was different. I was there to participate in a charity event for the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, a very valuable organization that helps recent immigrants adjust to life in the States. They teach English language skills, how to apply for government programs, and how to deal with that strange beast called American culture. The event involved a scavenger hunt through the neighborhood, and it took me to places I’d never before thought to go, like through the surprising housing developments that are hidden entirely by mangy office buildings. And dirty alleyways that reminded me vividly of the sort that used to be everywhere in Beijing and have mostly disappeared. And the grocery stores in hidden storefronts that you mostly find by the peculiar smell of fish that floats out from the doors, where you can buy fresh fruit for seventy-five cents a pound. Here was (and how Chinese!) a hidden city, layered behind the storefronts that, yes, are meant for tourists.

Most of all, I was fascinated by all the associations of uncertain purpose (The Chinese Progressive Association, The Wong Family Association, The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association), each of which sports a plaque over its door that springs into view only once you know to look for it. On a Saturday morning, the steps to many of these buildings were busy with parents and children, groups of men smoking their first cigarettes of the day, and venders peddling fresh fruit or water. This is where the life of the neighborhood happens, yet even for someone with a curious eye, it’s easy to walk past without noticing.

And then there was this, one of the nicest surprises of the morning, a little concrete park between buildings with a mural taking center stage:

It imitates a traditional shanshui painting, in this case in Qing dynasty style, with its pointed peaks, arched bridges, and wispy pine trees. I’ve walked down that block more times than I can count and never noticed it. It turns out that even in touristy Chinatown, as everywhere, there are treasures to discover if you just pay attention.

A Painter's Life by Yu Xiang

1.

I have to make the decision to paint some landscapes.
Like going to work everyday, .
I have to pass those overstuffed strawberries and chickens, .
pass banned books, STDs, myths, .
the beggar husband and wife who sing “Going Back Home,” .
distorted history, criminals on the run like dust.
or tailpipe exhaust, pass those things that have been dug up.
and filled in again and again so that they can’t be leveled, .
Culture Street, Peace Street, immediate quotations, .
unreasonable anger. .
.
2. .
.
I want to paint expressions and gestures, .
not stopping even during my period, .
lest sirens disturb the curve and flow of my brush. .
No matter how the law and justice oppose each other, .
a beautiful woman is still a living miracle, .
she makes life fade the way dye does. .
My good comrade, .
if I could paint you from memory, .
I would always have something to do. .
.
3. .
.
I want to paint a few still lifes, .
sell them cheap so as to survive. .
I took from the wall a few metals of the older generation, .
the backs covered with bright rust stains, .
from the bottom of a chest, I rummage through a pile of red leather certificates, I unscrew the living room’s beacons, .
for the sake of emotion, I arrange them again and again, .
these still lifes of aristocratic decline. .
.
4. .
.
No light, no light, .
colors seem like conversations in sleep. .
At night, I squeeze black and white directly on the canvas. .
White, spread blood, .
black, an explosion, .
the gray tune in the middle like abstract government. .
.
5. .
.
Sometimes, I paint naked voices. .
When the news report sends out signals, .
on the double bed I still hear venders hawking their wares, .
and recognize “Amsterdam’s River” .
in a flash—“the ocean’s great ebb and flow.” .
Some say: painting debauches people. .
I’ll just keep on being debauched. .
.
6. .
.
If I still have the strength, still have the strength.
I will send one to you. The painting .
has no title and no signature, .
like yet another exile. .

trans. Eleanor Goodman and Wang Ao.

《绘画生涯》

宇向

一
我得下决心去画一些户外景色。
就像每天上班，
必须经过那些臃肿的草莓和鸡，
经过禁书、性病、传说、
唱“回家看看”的乞丐夫妻、
篡改的历史、尘土或尾气般的
流窜犯，经过那些被一次一次挖开、
填平，结果再也添不平的
文化路、和平路、即时语录、
无端的愤怒……

二

我要去画表情和姿态,
在经期也不能停止，
以免警笛干扰笔尖的弯度和走向。
无论律法和公正如何背道而弛,
美女仍是一个活生生的奇迹，
她让生活像颜料一样消耗殆尽。
我的好同志，
只要我能在记忆中将你画出来，
那么我就永远有事可做。

三

我要画一些静物，
廉价卖掉，用以糊口。
我从墙上取下前辈的奖牌和勋章，
上面布满辉煌的锈迹,
从箱底翻出一摞红皮证书,
再将客厅的指路明灯拧下,
为了抒情，我一遍一遍摆放它们，
这些没落贵族般的静物。

四

没有光线，没有光线，
色彩像睡眠里的对话。
夜里，我直接将黑与白挤到画布上。
白，涂抹鲜血，
黑，爆炸，
中间的灰调子近似于抽象的政府。

五

有时，我画赤裸裸的声音。
当新闻联播里传出风声，
我仍听到双人床上的叫卖，
并在《阿姆斯特丹的河流》里
瞬间认出——“大海的巨大徘徊”
有人说：绘画使人堕落。
我就继续堕落

六

如果我还有力气，还有力气，
我会寄一幅给你。画面上
没有标题也没有签名，
像一个又一个流亡者。

(Read Eleanor Goodman's interview with Yu Xiang here.) 

Eleanor Goodman interviews Yu Xiang

(Ed note:  David and I met Yu Xian and Eleanor Goodman while traveling in China in the spring of 2008.  Yu Xian lives in Jinan, Shandong Province. In 2004 she was named "one of the top ten women poets" in China. Yu Xiang's two books are 哈气  (Exhale),  and 女巫师  (Sorceress), both published in China. Read two of her poems here and here and return tomorrow and Saturday for more. sdh)

EG:  You started writing poetry in your twenties, which is rather late for a poet. What was your attitude toward literature when you were a child? Why did you wait so long to start writing?

YX: I grew up in the countryside with my grandmother, and moved to my parents’ house in the city when it was time to go to school. It was an alien environment with very little interaction; I only had myself to talk to. In school, I liked languages and fine art, and I was good at writing essays, but there was so little available to read (at that time in China, the home environment and the surrounding environment pulled in opposite directions; for example, only if you weren’t a good student would you get to test to get into an arts school, and so on). When I was a little older, a few romance novels were passed back and forth at my school. They were very beautiful and very false, completely irrelevant to real life. I thought literature was a kind of hoax, and I didn’t like it anymore; I gave up my nascent literary dreams. After all, when you’re young, you don’t know that there is a larger universe. In private, I would keep a diary and frantically write down my feelings. Then after a time, I would rip them up or burn them.

After about third grade, there were no more art classes, and painting became a kind of lasting dream, which for all sorts of reasons was never realized. To express what I needed to say without relying on shapes, I started to write poem after poem. After that, I threw myself into poetry, but even more of my energy had to be spent just on subsisting. Of course, the provocations and power of the spirit that arise from the pressures of living one’s life and of experience and so on, will slowly and naturally be reflected in one’s poetry.

I’m certain that some people have a kind of deeply rooted instinct, which even great waves of fate can’t drown. It’s the power of “oppression” seeking “freedom” and the power of “freedom” rescuing “oppression.” It’s the mysterious power of a kind of mutual seeking. I think poetry and I are this way, at those wonderful moments....For me, poetry is very sudden, and inevitable.

EG:  Your husband is also a poet and artist. Do you think it’s hard for two people in the arts to live together, or are they better able to support and understand each other?

YX: I don’t know how other artistic couples are, but we’re actually very supportive and understanding of each other. I’m not very social; sometimes I’m not very good at interacting with others, and I don’t enjoy some aspects of ordinary life. But he’s more outspoken. Together, we’re pretty complementary. 

EG: Some complain that in contemporary China, people are increasingly concerned with money. What place do you think literature has in China today? Does poetry need a particular kind of environment in order to flourish? Or in difficult times, is poetry more unique and lively?

YX: There is this sort of phenomenon, a widespread lack of a spiritual life, and the most fundamental reason for this is because China is still using an antiquated system. I personally don’t like much of the contemporary literature that is officially published in China. But today, among ordinary people and on the internet, literature has a lot of relevance, which is to say that in an exceedingly absurd situation of resistance and oppression, there still exists a true literariness.

Poetry can flourish in any environment, but in “difficult times” the responsibility of poets and pressure put on poets will both be heavy. Not every serious poet is suited to writing critical poetry. If one writes an inferior poem criticizing reality, that isn’t as a good as using a different method to express one’s point of view. After all, “poet” and “hero” is not the same concept. But at the very least, a poet must posses an essentially critical spirit, and be a person who makes independent judgments.

EG: Chinese literary critics sometimes discuss ‘poets’ and ‘women poets’ separately. Does this way of analyzing have any real usefulness, or is it a holdover from a historical bias against women?

YX: Sometimes the expression is convenient. We also say ‘male poets.’ This is a simple question, and also a very complicated question. It’s hard to explain, and it doesn’t really fall in my field of expertise.

EG:  But in the current climate, is there any difference between men and women poets, for example in terms of opportunities to publish, teach, or give readings?

YX: This isn’t an easy question, and the debate about it can get too heated. I see myself as a poet who speaks through her poetry, and I haven’t put any energy into researching issues around “Poetry.” I trust my own way of dealing with poetry. I just write poems, good poems. At the same time, I’m interested in this particular moment in history, and in understanding the depths of human nature.

EG:  You’re originally from Shandong Province, in northeastern China. How has place and climate influenced your work?

YX:  My sense of regionalism is fairly weak. To write is to choose the standpoint of an individual. It can’t represent a given landscape, and my work even less so. But climate does have an influence—I used to like the things that grow in the north. But now there’s global climate change, and as I get older, my physical requirements have been changing too.

EG:  How do you view American readers? Do you hope your work will be translated into English?

YX:  There is always a potential readership there, since art doesn’t obey national boundaries. I believe that translation is a good thing, provided that the translator is worth trusting.

EG:  What do you mean by ‘worth trusting’? Should a translator prioritize maintaining the meaning of the original poem, or the feeling of it? Or should the translator create the most powerful poem she can in her own language?

YX: Of course it’s great if the translator tries her best to maintain the original meaning and feeling of the poem. That’s just the normal introduction of a poem into a new linguistic environment, although I know even this is difficult. As for the latter suggestion that the translator produce the most powerful poem she can, who could object to that? It’s just that in that case, the translator also becomes an author, and this should be made clear to the reader.

EG:  In terms of your own poetry, some of your work is very short and the language is fairly simple (as, for example, in “Low Key”). How do you see the difference between complex and plain language? Is there a difference?

YX: The Chinese in “Low Key” has a particular linguistic feel to it, and the feel of language is definitely very hard to translate. The difficulty or simplicity of language is decided by what a person prefers. Individual poets seek different things in their writing, and their writing will also go through phases. All along, I’ve loved freedom and sudden breakthroughs. I also have long poems, and other forms of poetry, and the language is relatively simple in all of them.

EG:  Have you gone through stages as a writer? What sorts of changes have you seen in your own work?

YX:  I’ve gone through countless little phases. At the moment, I might be facing a more significant phase, which isn’t limited to my writing; a lot of it has come about because of my personal history, environment, life experiences—for example, in practical terms, my life is very strenuous right now, and that leads to changes.
                                                                        

Eleanor Goodman writes fiction, poetry, and essays, and translates from Chinese. Her work has appeared widely in journals such asPN Review, Los Angeles Review, Fiction, Pleiades, New Delta Review, Perihelion, The Pedestal Magazine, and The Guardian. She is currently working on a novel. Follow this link to read more of Eleanor's blog posts. 

A More Whimsical Note [by Eleanor Goodman]

My first summer in Shanghai, I horrified my female Shanghainese coworkers by daring to walk around outside. It wasn’t that they were worried that I would suffer from heatstroke in the humid 95-degree weather, or get run over by a bus or motorized rickshaw on the chaotic streets, or even that I would get lost in the labyrinthine back alleys where I liked to wander. No, they were worried about my face.

“Your skin was so pretty, but now you’re getting so dark!” they would cry, in a tone usually reserved for national disasters.

Coming from the States, where those odd cancer-causing machines called tanning beds are still popular and people think it’s a good idea to go to the beach to lie out in the sun until they turn as pink as undercooked pork, I was flummoxed by my coworkers’ attitude. I have to admit I reacted in typical foreigner fashion: I ignored them. Finally, one of the receptionists moved decisively to save me from my own ignorance. She bought me an umbrella.

Parasols have a long history in China, along with an appreciation of pale skin, and neither shows signs of fading. In Shanghai, you will find many more umbrellas deployed on a sunny day than on a rainy one. I stubbornly resisted until one brutally hot day when a friend insisted that I step under her umbrella. I discovered something amazing: it felt at least ten degrees cooler under that glorious round shadow. Instead of scurrying from leafy tree to leafy tree (which tend to be few and far between in Chinese cities), I could carry around my own personal shade! Feeling sheepish, I started using the umbrella the receptionist gave me, and it made a huge difference in how sweat-soaked and cranky I was when I arrived at the office. I learned to love my protective nylon friend.

But then I came back to the States, and I had to give up my habit out of shame. Using an umbrella just invited too much gawking and unwanted attention. (This from a guy in a landscaping truck: “It must be raining baby, ‘cause you just dropped from heaven.”) But I really miss it on those hot days when you can feel the sun burning your shoulders, turning your nose an unsightly red and incrementally inching up your chances of melanoma.

So I plead with you, gentle reader: let’s bring the parasol back. Not only does it protect from the heat of the sun and offer better SPF than any lotion, it can be a fashion statement. In China, there are ruffled parasols, polka dot parasols, silk parasols, painted parasols, even personalized ones. We could start our own American parasol industry to replace chemical sunscreen manufacturing. Once the idea takes off and carrying a parasol becomes common, all sideways glances and comments will disappear. And a lot of skin cancer with it. Remember: Power in numbers!

You Can't Go Home Again by John Lane

I’ve traveled a good deal—Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada—but until China I’d never had the experience of measuring a place entirely against what I imagined about it from books. I don’t know why, but I expected things there would be caught in amber. 

The frontal lobes of my brain had prepared me for China’s modernity, but somewhere in the lower recesses I half-expected to see flickering shadows of a 3,000-year-old agrarian culture with intact village life, rice paddies, and peasants in pajamas toiling in the fields with oxen.

I hoped in China I would get a chance to at least see some countryside and make contact with something that would offer a hint of Pearl Buck’s rural landscape in The Good Earth.

About a week into the trip we went by bus to Hangzhou, a city of seven million south of Shanghai. Hangzhou is the hometown of a young assistant professor of Chinese at our college we call TZ.

It’s TZ’s first year on the faculty, and the trip was quite a perk. He got to visit China and introduce a group of eager new colleagues to his home.

As the first week of the trip unfolded I realized I had a great deal in common with TZ. Though we are of different generations and diverse cultures, TZ is a writer too. He has a PHD from Berkeley, but what he really wants, he told me as we left Fudan University, was to be “the most famous writer from Hangzhou.”

Forty miles out of Shanghai we finally began to see more of what TZ called “the rural side,” the equivalent of the countryside in the US. We passed a large country market set up under a highway overpass. It stretched on for a long distance under the raised highway. I was disappointed. So far the countryside looked more like a light industrial zone. There was nothing quaint or agrarian about a farmer’s market set up in the shadow of an overpass.

TZ sensed my disappointment, said, “No, the rural side drive is not like drive from Spartanburg to Atlanta.”

We rolled on further and finally what we passed became a more diverse agricultural landscape, a vineyard here, a small chicken farm there, four or five shallow ponds to farm fish, a five-acre fallow winter field, another two acres of small hot houses.

The agriculture is dense and public. The farmers’ houses are all packed together, all two or three story moderns. More like mini-apartment complexes and they still didn’t match my Romantic view of the countryside. I tried to articulate my disappointment. TZ explained the old villages like I wanted to see have been gone for 40 years. “This is a very rich area now with all the industry, so even the farmers live in nice houses.”

TZ has great love of his place of birth, particularly in its literary tradition. “Four of six best writers of the 20^th Century come from my province,” TZ said with pride as we approached the city. He said that he writes mostly about Hangzhou and has published a few stories in US Chinese language magazines, but that what he really wants is to put together a book of short stories about contemporary Hangzhou “like Joyce, you know, Dubliners.’’  He said his favorite American writer of the 20^th Century is Thomas Wolfe. “You can’t go home again,” he said. “This I know, this day.”

This return home was a big moment for TZ, his first visit back as a professional, not a student anymore. I asked him if his parents read what he writes. “Oh no, I would be afraid for my father to read my stories.”

As we approached Hangzhou we crossed a fairly large river. TZ said, “When I was a kid I always swam in that river.” He smiled a little as if to tell me that maybe it’s not the same now. “I was very liberal when I was young. But now I’m pretty conservative. I hate it that so many people come to my hometown. I can’t even speak my own dialect in my own town now.”

TZ stepped off the bus when we approached downtown. He would go see his parents like a good son. He disappeared down a crowded city street.

As we rolled on into Hangzhou I thought about how different two writers can be. I grew up in a Southern American town in the middle of what many called “the American Century.”

Iwas Thomas Wolf’s doppelganger. Go home? I couldn’t even successfully leave. I tried the Pacific Northwest, New England, the coast of Georgia, and I always came home. I’ve now been “home” for 23 years, teaching at a college that’s a stone’s throw away from where my great-grandparents were married at a textile village church almost a century ago.

TZ teaches half-way around the world from Hangzhou, writing stories about his hometown at the beginning of what some are already calling “the Chinese Century.” Maybe he will write about the great "economic take-off" as seen through the eyes of his own Sino version of Stephen Dedalus. Maybe he will capture the epiphany of swimming in that river in the brief moment just before the soul of China collides with the future.

“Oh lost!” Thomas Wolfe said, dreaming of the past, and longing for literary relief from the present and the future.