A Century of Modern Chinese Poetry: An Anthology (University of Washington Press, 2023), edited by Michelle M. Yeh, Zhangbin Li, and Frank Stewart is an excellent comprehensive book that tracks the evolution of Chinese poetry over the last hundred years. A big strength of the anthology is that it shows how history intertwines with aesthetics. China went through massive changes as a country at the beginning of the twentieth century and the aesthetic shifts that occurred in Chinese poetry mirror the changes that happened on a political and cultural level. The book is broken down into sections that document the country’s shifting political identity throughout the century: The Formative Period (1910s-1920s), The First Flowering of Modern Poetry (1930s-1940s), The Modernist Movement and Surrealism (1950s-1960s), Underground Poetry, Nativism, and Women’s Voices (1970s-1980s), The Anti-Sublime and Multiculturalism (1980s-1990s), and New Lyricism and Postmodern Experiments (The New Millennium). Each section begins with an overview of what was happening politically and aesthetically during each time period, and each featured poet is introduced with a brief biography. The most significant difference between Chinese poetry that was written before and after the twentieth century is explained by Michelle Yeh in the introduction in the form of a series of questions: “Is it poetry when it sounds like plain speech? Is it poetry when it looks no different from prose? Is it poetry when it doesn’t rhyme? Is it poetry when it doesn’t have traditionally “poetic” images?” These questions aren’t unique to Chinese poetry; Modernism in general brought forth the same questions in Western poetry. However, because China was becoming increasingly westernized, these questions may have felt more pertinent to Chinese poets and readers alike. This review will give a brief overview of what defines modern Chinese poetry and highlight five standout poems in the collection, so that readers can become more familiarized with the modern style of Chinese poetry. Because the anthology contains so much excellent poetry from so many excellent Chinese poets, it is a book that will appeal to readers not just on an educational level, but on an aesthetic level. Anyone who would like to read good Chinese poetry will find much to enjoy about Modern Chinese Poetry.

Michelle Yeh wrote an incredibly thorough introduction that clearly explains what sets Modern Chinese Poetry apart from Classical Chinese Poetry. Here is her definition of Classical Chinese Poetry: “The medium of Classical Poetry is Classical Chinese, a written language that requires a high level of education and is characterized by remarkable economy and concision. Although Classical Poetry may appropriate some vernacular, it is by and large a literary language distinct from spoken Chinese.” The biggest difference between the two types of poetry is that Classical Chinese Poetry utilizes its own language, Classical Chinese, which can only be read by a select group of privileged individuals. Here is her definition of Modern Chinese Poetry:

Modern Chinese poetry—hereafter Modern Poetry—differs in both aspects. Modern Poetry does not conform to traditional Chinese poetic forms and is mostly written in free verse. Occasionally, some structural regularity exists in a modern poem, such as a fixed number of characters in each line or use of rhymes, or a poem bears the name of a classical Chinese form, such as jueju (quatrain) or the tune of a ci (song lyrics). However, even in these cases, there is no mistake that the poems are modern because they do not conform to the formal restrictions of Classical Poetry and the language of the poems is modern vernacular Chinese rather than Classical Chinese.

Readers will immediately take note that Modern Chinese Poetry is much more nuanced because it incorporates not only vernacular language, but a wider range of images and subject matter. As Yeh clarifies, “While classical Chinese images are often used, Modern Poetry does not shy away from those that are traditionally considered “unpoetic”—the ugly, the absurd, and the grotesque.” To give readers a more specific understanding of the role of history in Chinese poetry, Yeh gives a wonderful explanation of how politics had an impact on poetics:

The role and function of poetry changed dramatically as China entered the twentieth century. In the political arena, the Qing dynasty was overthrown in 1911 and replaced by the Republic of China, the first republic in Chinese history. Even before the demise of monarchy, the Qing court abolished the civil service examination system in 1905 in response to the growing demand for political reform. In the educational sphere, as part of the national project of modernization, China adopted the Western model of education, which meant a new system of categorizing, producing, and disseminating knowledge. In the cultural realm, the May Fourth Movement of 1919—often dubbed as the Chinese Age of Enlightenment, or Chinese Renaissance—represented a wholesale reform movement to rid China of its “feudal” concepts and practices derived from the Confucian orthodoxy and folk traditions. In their place, such Western ideas as democracy, scientism, and nationalism were introduced and circulated by the modern mass media.

Like any major literary shift, these changes had their positives and negatives. The negative is that Chinese poetry became less simplistic in a way that no longer allowed poetry to be easily consumed and memorized. According to Yeh, “The Shijing is a collection of songs in three categories: folk songs from various states, songs composed by aristocrats, and songs performed at sacrificial rituals honoring royal ancestors.” These songs were written to be chanted or sung. It is similar to Classical English poetry in the West, which was primarily metrical, so that poems could easily be memorized and recited. However, modern Chinese poetry, much like modern English poetry, is not written to be memorized. As Yeh explains, “…Modern Poetry for the most part does not use rhymes but relies on the inherent rhythm and cadence of natural speech to convey a mood or enhance an idea.” This negative, however, is only cosmetic in nature. The positives of this poetic shift is that it opened up the landscape of poetry immensely so that poets could write from more complex, personal, and unique perspectives, and make use of their own individualized rhythm and musicality. As Yeh points out, “…Modern Poetry has enriched and expanded the Chinse tradition with abundant energy and imagination….Modern Poetry represents Chinese experiences in the modern world and embodies ideas, affects, and worldviews derived from those experiences.” As a result, Chinese poetry became more representative of diversity and personal experience. Although a reader of Chinese poetry could no longer easily memorize and recite a poem, the reader could now come to poetry to learn about what it means to be human, and to experience a range of emotions that go beyond the enjoyment of pleasant literary music. This evolution was the key to the survival and flourishing of Chinese poetry all throughout the twentieth century.

The first poem to be discussed is Xin Di’s “The Source of Loneliness” (1946). It is included in The First Flowering of Modern Poetry (1930s-1940s), during a time when China had experienced the Second Sino-Japanese War followed by WWII. However, poetry thrived in safe spaces throughout these two decades. Xin Di is the pen name of Wang Xindi, who translated Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs de mal from English to Chinese, was highly educated in English literature and was influenced by Gerard Manley Hopkins, W.H. Auden, and T.S. Eliot. Di didn’t receive proper recognition until 1981, when a book called Nine Leaves was published that featured nine poets who were actively writing in the 1940s. Here is the poem in its entirety, translated by John Balcom:

Two towering walls block our way
People walk between them as if through a valley
A ribbon of blue sky spans the distance between birth and death
If the argument for freedom is stirred by the wind
The electrified air will echo back at any moment
Where you meet with trouble today is a myriad colored sea of garbage
Fetid odors of the city and death are the only things that shock
Time scolds the darkness as it walks toward dawn
The universe is a giant gray elephant
If you don’t step back you’ll never see it clearly or touch it at all
Cries fall in the empty desert
Just like you striking yourself with a bare fist.

The modern style of poetry writing is clearly evident in Di’s poem. Although he was influenced by metrical poets, this poem employs a more natural rhythm that gives the lines a unique, individualized voice. The poem includes no punctuation until the last line, which concludes with a period. However, what makes this poem so compelling is that each line contains its own thought, but the lines also spill over into each other. The first three lines: “Two towering walls block our way / People walk between them as if through a valley / A ribbon of blue sky spans the distance between birth and death” build a scene that is immediately complicated by the fourth and fifth lines: “If the argument for freedom is stirred by the wind / The electrified air will echo back at any moment.” The poem is more cerebral and abstract than anything else, although the images do begin to stack up, especially with the metaphor in line six: “…trouble today is a myriad sea of garbage” and the metaphor in lines nine and ten: “The universe is a giant gray elephant / If you don’t step back you’ll never see it clearly or touch it at all.” These images, when put together: “sea of garbage,” “gray elephant,” and “empty desert” in line eleven, create poetic tension, which became very prominent in modern poetry, not just in the East, but in the West as well. Rather than utilizing metrical tension to create complexity within a poem, poetic tension was now primarily achieved through image and abstract thought, and Di’s poem contains both. The poem is not meant to be understood, but rather, encourages the reader to have a poetic experience that emphasizes life in all of its complexities rather than merely enjoying heightened language and pleasant images. Di’s poem ends with two unromantic, but emotively powerful lines: “Cries fall in the empty desert / Just like you striking yourself with a bare fist.” These two lines don’t bring meaning closer to the reader, but instead, leave the reader to grapple with the feeling of inner conflict that the speaker himself might also be experiencing. “The Source of Loneliness” utilizes poetic openness and emotional complexity as a way to engage the reader. It is an abstract poem in nature in the way it resists narrative and meaning, but it is also a very gritty, solid, and metaphysical poem.

The second poem is Zhou Mengdie’s “Aloneland” (1958) and is included in The Modernist Movement and Surrealism (1950s-1960s). This poem was written during the time period when Mao Zedong founded the People’s Republic of China and the Cold War was in its infancy. Yeh gives a more specific explanation of the political turmoil China endured during these two decades:

…the People’s Republic was embroiled in a series of political campaigns initiated by Chairman Mao Zedong, such as the Three-Anti and Five-Anti Campaigns of 1951-52 and the Anti-Rightist Campaign of 1957-59. The objectives were to consolidate power of the Communists by purging the so-called counterrevolutionaries—capitalists, landlords, intellectuals, and those formerly associated with the Nationalists. Numbering in the millions, those who were thus labeled were persecuted, sent to prisons or labor camps, or executed. The Great Leap Forward, the economic plan that spanned the years 1958 to 1962, sought to increase industrial and agricultural production through the commune system, but it turned out to be a disaster and led to the Great Famine, during which it is estimated that tens of millions died from starvation….To combat dissent, he [Zedong] turned to young people and started the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966.

However, Hong Kong became a safe space for poetry to continue to flourish, allowing for surrealism and experimentation to continue to develop. Zhuo Mengdie is the pen name of Zhou Qishu. The name Mengdie is derived from a Daoist parable and means “dreaming of butterfly.” He moved to Taiwan in 1948 after joining the Nationalist army. For twenty years, he ran a bookstand near Café Astoria, where many writers and artists gathered. In 1962, Mengdie became a Buddhist. Here is “Aloneland” in its entirety, translated by Lloyd Haft:

Last night, again in dream I saw myself
sitting naked, cross-legged on a snowy mountain peak.

The climate here is stuck where spring grafts onto winter.
(The snow here is gentle as swan’s down.)
Here there are no importunate cries from the marketplace,
only the faint sound of time chewing time’s cud.
No cobras here, no owls, no beasts with human faces,
only thorn apples, olive trees, and jade butterflies.
Here no text, no coordinates, no Buddha with a thousand hands and eyes,
but at every turn the unspoken power of a nebulous teeming silence.
Here, day has the quiet and seclusion of night,
night is more enchanting, richer, more brilliant than day
and this cold is like strong drink, rich in poetry and beauty.
Even the Void knows how to play go; it invites skyful
of stars that need no words to understand…

The past stays standing; what’s to come doesn’t come.
I’m the servant of Now, and its Sage Emperor.

Where Di’s poem felt very modernist and abstract, Mengdie’s poem feels intimate, descriptive, and spiritual. The poem is also experimental in the way it is presented: a free-verse poetic passage sandwiched between couplets. It is a compelling form that asserts the “I” in fascinating ways. Readers will notice that the “I” only exists in the couplets where the reader makes strong assertions: “…I saw myself / sitting naked, cross-legged on a snowy mountain peak,” “I’m the servant of Now, and its Sage Emperor.” The middle section of the poem is primarily concerned with description, but it still feels very personal because the speaker, who does not talk about himself, seems to be trying to connect with whomever he is writing to (the poem feels like a letter or journal entry). Because the speaker appears to be isolated, his description is very specific: “(The snow here is gentle as swan’s down),” “No cobras here, no owls, no beasts with human faces / only thorn apples, olive trees, and jade butterflies,” and “…no Buddha with a thousand hands and eyes. Although the speaker is very much aware of his surroundings, he’s also aware of the multidimensionality of his location: “at every turn the unspoken power of a nebulous teeming silence,” “this cold is like strong drink, rich in poetry and beauty,” and “Even the Void knows how to play go; it invites skyful / of stars.” However, the most impactful line occurs in the first line of the couplet after the description: “The past stays standing; what’s to come doesn’t come.” The speaker is fully immersed in the present moment, even as he seems to be trying to connect with someone. This creates wonderful tension in the poem as it reaches out and simultaneously remains detached. The speaker—who dreams he is naked on a mountain, feels what is present and missing from his surroundings, is isolated from civilization and religion (the marketplace and Buddha), and feels more enamored with night than day—is creating a complex “I” through this experience of solitude. It is interesting to view Mengdie’s poem within the historical context of Cold War ideology (capitalism versus communism) and Zedong’s oppressive communist rule which attempted to assert the collective over the individual. Mengdie’s poem seems to be making a case for individuality in “Aloneland” from a place of spiritual and personal empowerment. The speaker wants to know himself and his surroundings through solitude, define himself through being present, but also wants to communicate what he sees and feels to another human. It is a nice counterpoint to Zedong’s and the Cold War’s distorted interpretation of what it means to be a collective and what it means to be an individual.

Ping-kwan Leung’s “Lotus Link” (1983) is included in Underground Poetry, Nativism, and Women’s Voices (1970s-1980s). This time period is classified by the death of Mao Zedong, underground salons, the Higher Education Examination being reinstated, and Deng Xiaoping coming into power and opening the country up to capitalism. Underground poetry flourished during this time and reacted against the Cultural Revolution, and women became more visible in the literary scene. Leung grew up in Hong Kong, graduated from the English Department at Baptist University in 1970, earned his doctorate in English literature from the University of California, San Diego in 1984, and taught at the University of Hong Kong and Lingnan University. Aside from poetry, he wrote fiction, was a literary scholar, and also a film and cultural critic. Here is the first part of “Lotus Link,” translated by May Huang:

I come to this lotus field by chance
Walking along old planks into foliage
The sound of silence rubbing against silence
How miraculous, green responding
To green, meeting in the morning of this world
Wind blows open that closed face
Swaying the furled leaves where I stand
Soon we’ll make contact
And start to clumsily explain
The veins on a leaf that language can illuminate
Are the only world we know

What readers will notice about this poem is how it’s primarily voice-driven. It’s also not abstract. This poem is more meditative, more grounded, and rhythmic. However, there are wonderful poetic lines to connect to: “The sound of silence rubbing against silence,” “green responding / To green,” “Wind blows open that closed face / Swaying the furled leaves where I stand.” The speaker also introduces a “we” perspective that becomes more complex later on in the poem: “Soon we’ll make contact / And start to clumsily explain / The veins on a leaf that language can illuminate / Are the only world we know.” “Lotus Link” almost feels like a lyrical poem as well, which helps the speaker communicate what he sees by enhancing the scene a bit. Here is the middle part of the poem:

Morning’s gradually rounding dewdrops
Make me pause, and my silence
Prompts another leaf, who also bears
The weight of a perched insect
Meeting by chance in this world, side by side
But without taking pains to arrange a rhyme
We make the same sound then lose one another
Rather than searching the wind, why don’t we
Look naturally, for meaning will slowly float up
The frost on leaves still weighs me down
Growing from the same shallow water
Exerting to stand up straight with a hollow green stem
Extending toward a truer plane

The lens of the poem becomes more focused as the speaker becomes more interactive with nature: “Morning’s gradually rounding dewdrops / Make me pause,” “The weight of a perched insect / Meeting by chance in this world…We make the same sound then lose one another,” and “The frost on leaves still weighs me down.” The poem, because it becomes so focused on specific nature images, becomes even more meditative as the speaker moves from image to image and how those images makes him feel. Here is the last part of the poem:

I know we cannot leave this world’s
Language, but we don’t have to echo it
When we are silent, that place still brims with sound
Each of us shall tolerate the seasons’ dust
While listening closely, and unfurling,
We feel the colors of distant waters

The ending here is brilliant not just because Leung includes a profound revelation: “I know we cannot leave this world’s / Language, but we don’t have to echo it;” it zooms out significantly and becomes more insightful and inclusive. “We” becomes the more prominent perspective, which helps to create a collective consciousness within the poem: “When we are silent, that place still brims with sound,” “While listening closely, and unfurling, / We feel the colors of distant waters.” Not only is it an interesting rhetorical move on Leung’s part to bring in a wider consciousness in a meditative poem that features a quiet, thoughtful, down-to-earth voice, it’s also a refreshing lyrical move because it opens the poem up. The shift from “I” to “we” also feels very spiritual here as the speaker, after spending a good amount of time observing nature in solitude, becomes conscious of being part of a universal collective. This kind of meditative thinking is interesting to see in relation to the poems that have already been discussed. Not only does “Lotus Link” feel more personal than the other poems, it feels more grounded as the speaker engages with nature and emotion in simplistic, but profound ways.

The last two poems are both featured in The Anti-Sublime and Multiculturalism (1980s-1990s). The eighties in mainland China experienced what is called the New Age of Enlightenment, which allowed for artistic experimentation and intellectual development through Western translations of literature and philosophy. Chinese identity was also being reinvented during this time. However, the period was also characterized by more oppression. There was the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign in 1983 and the Anti-Bourgeois Liberation Campaign in 1987, all fueled by the Communist Party. Tianamen Square happened in 1989. Obscure Poetry (which came into existence in the late seventies and early eighties) continued to influence poets who wrote and published in underground journals. Ouyang Jianghe’s “Strawberry” (1988) is the first poem that will be discussed. Ouyang Jianghe is the pen name of Jiang He. He was in the military and began publishing poetry in 1979. In the eighties, he worked at the provincial Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and in the nineties he lived in the United States. Since 2015, he has taught at Beijing Normal University, and in addition to poetry, he has written about literature, music, film, theater, and art. Here is the first stanza of “Strawberry,” translated by Michelle Yeh and Frank Stewart:

If a strawberry is ablaze, she will be the white snow’s little sister.
She touches your lips, but she loves someone else.
No one can tell me if anything ever existed before a strawberry was given.
In this long life, my every step begins with a strawberry.
A group of children gallop in bright-red thoughts against the wind.
When they are tired, they glance back without thinking
—it is such a beautiful but bewildering moment!

What makes this poem so interesting is how it is both serious and playful. The speaker is definitely playing with the image of the strawberry, making use of it in a variety of ways: “If a strawberry is ablaze, she will be the white snow’s little sister,” “No one can tell me if anything ever existed before a strawberry was given,” “In this long life, my every step begins with a strawberry.” However, children also enter the poem and create an interesting kind of tension that works in contrast to the strawberry image. Here is the second stanza:

I was young then, stuffing my mouth with strawberries.
The green field I have long forgotten,
Teardrops about to fall yet never quite falling,
Once, a little boy clinging to his parents cried bitterly under the sky.
I turn and walk into the dark clouds so he can’t see me.
The loneliness of two is only half of loneliness.
Can first love be communicated by a strawberry?

The poem becomes more complex as the speaker begins to reflect on his own childhood. His child self fills his mouth with strawberries, he remembers a green field he forgot, wants to cry but can’t, sees a boy “clinging to his parents” and crying “bitterly under the sky,” and then turns away from that child (who could be a version of himself he is rejecting). The last two lines are especially emotive: “The loneliness of two is only half of loneliness. / Can first love be communicated by a strawberry?” These lines feel a bit cryptic when viewed in relation to the stanza, but purposely so, because ultimately, Jiange’s poem resists meaning in the sense that images and memories can’t always explain lived experience, which can be fragmented and complicated. Here is the last stanza:

Childhood’s dizziness has lingered to this day.
Lovers glow violet as moonlight fills their bosoms.
This is not an age of lyricism,
A strawberry is merely the speed from the bite to the body.
Nothing is closer to dying than tasting a strawberry.
Oh, this generation of premature aging, old dreams that never return,
Who will hear my elegy of endless self-pity?

The concluding stanza feels a bit ironic as the speaker rejects a traditionally poetic ending that would be uplifting or optimistic in favor of dark humor. He makes it explicitly clear: “This is not an age of lyricism.” Although “Strawberry” does have lyrical qualities to it, the content, which is both playful and intense, are not meant to be taken as poetically sentimental. Jianghe reintroduces a bit of the playfulness from the first stanza by bringing the image of the strawberry back to the forefront: “A strawberry is merely the speed from the bite to the body,” “Nothing is closer to dying than tasting a strawberry.” However, the tone is more ironic than playful. The last line cements the tone in clever ways: “Who will hear my elegy of endless self-pity?” Jianghe is engaged with irony and dark humor in brilliant ways, by utilizing romantic images like the strawberry and childhood as symbols that he reimagines as anti-symbols. In this sense, the poet is playing with memory and meaning, and how meaning is fluid rather than fixed. “Strawberry” is very poetically clever in ways that the other poems previously discussed are not, because the speaker in the poem feels very much aware that he exists in a poem. “Strawberry” could be classified as a postmodern poem because it employs a counternarrative to the typical multi-stanza lyric poem; it is both offbeat and illuminating.

The final poem to be discussed is Chen Dongdong’s “Horse in the Rain” (1985). Dongdong graduated from the Chinese Department of Shanghai Normal University in 1984, worked as a teacher and editor, and has been writing full-time since 1998. Here is the poem in its entirety, translated by Eleanor Goodman:

In the dark, pick up an instrument. Sit steadily in the dark
the sound of a horse drifts over from the far end
a horse in the rain
this obsolete instrument, glittering
like the far end of a tree
the cotton roses begin to bloom, startling a few gray robins
the horse in the rain is doomed to gallop through my memory
like an instrument in the hand
like cotton roses blooming on a warm fragrant evening
at the far end of the passageway
I sit steadily like a flower blooming all night
a horse in the rain. The horse in the rain is doomed to gallop through my memory
I picked up the instrument
and strummed the song I wanted to sing

This poem is very different from “Strawberry” in the sense that the speaker embraces lyricism as a way to embody empowerment. What is interesting is how the poem begins: “In the dark, pick up an instrument.” It is a bit of a command, but the rest of the poem features a lyrical “I,” so the speaker might actually be commanding himself to pick up the instrument, which he does. There is the repeating image of the horse in the rain, the instrument, cotton roses, and the lyrical “I,” but they don’t feel overly romantic, forced, or artificial—in fact, these images feel very natural. Dongdong employs a lyrical rhythmic voice that also feels very natural: “this obsolete instrument, glittering / like the far end of a tree / the cotton roses begin to bloom, startling a few gray robins / the horse in the rain is doomed to gallop through my memory / like an instrument in the hand.” The rhythm of the lines is unique and hypnotic. What is also interesting about the poem is that the instrument is never specified. All readers know is that it is “obsolete.” And yet it is the perfect instrument for what the speaker needs it for: “I picked up the instrument / and strummed the song I wanted to sing.” The last two lines are utterly compelling not just because they emphasize the lyrical “I” as an agent of creative expression, they are the culmination of the rhythm and nature images that came before it. Dongdong’s poem, in its style and voice, is a drastic departure from the ones discussed above because it embraces pure lyricism. It evokes deeper romantic emotions about the self and nature, minus artificial sentimentality. Although the poem is titled “Horse in the Rain” and the phrase itself serves as an anchor image in the poem, the poem is still very much about the speaker’s desire to make music. Through Dongdong’s brilliant use of repetition, image, and rhythm, that song is created. So the last lines feel a bit postmodern that way: the poem is the song the speaker wanted to sing.

In the introduction, Yeh asserts, “Over the course of a century, it [Modern Chinese Poetry] has overcome historical, aesthetic, and linguistic challenges; risen above criticisms and controversies; endured wars, massive exodus, and social upheavals; and survived censorship and political persecutions. It has produced many talented poets and fine works and rightfully takes its place in the ranks of world literature.” A Century of Modern Chinese Poetry contains so much brilliant poetry, it would not be a stretch to call this book a definitive text in terms of how it connects Chinese poetic movements to Chinese history, and how it represents the quality, variety, and distinctness of Modern Chinese Poetry. It is a book worth spending time with for readers who want to familiarize themselves with Modern Chinese Poetry and it is an aesthetically influential book for poets who want to refine and reimagine their own poetic craft. Yeh is not wrong when she asserts that modern Chinese poetry “rightfully takes its place in the ranks of world literature.” The poems in this anthology are proof of that truth, and deserve to be read by poetry lovers, students, poets, and artists of all mediums alike.

August 21, 2023