All 9 entries tagged Poetry

Going Home——a parody of William Empson's Autumn on Nanyue

Writing about web page http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080128/ts_nm/china_weather_dc

“The soul of waiting” is just
what we travellers have to do
(The souls are not lonely now, this city
trapped 100, 000 and as I write
the number perhaps goes up to two
all shudder at the winter’s thrust
In cradles that enourage ‘flu)
Into the warmer Cantonese fair
we entered and otherwise never dare
And men get curiously non-plussed
more urgent is the food than care
The proper trains to get on board
are those remain in your thought
Let the next schedule be discussed
we bet on the fate and leave it to the God
Going home is quite a trouble
But of mother that dinner
many years have failed to smother
As a piece of ice platter
It would not repay me a double

Xiu Wang : 28 Jan 2008 07:57 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

song of the new year

Happy New year!

Hope it is still now too late to wish myself a happy new year. There was no romantic counting down at all, yet I guess I am already over with those teenage enthusiasm or passion when the new year clock beats. I spend my New Year eve “dating” Hegel and the following evening on the coach back to Zhuhai. I don’t make new year wish, and this year it is a pledge. I have to wrap up everything this year, and it seems now I have already stopped worrying about what I am going to get - a Mexican wrap or a Chinese dumpling - anything, as long as it is wrapped!! There are so many appealing stops ahead: Greek beach, Indian temple, Mexican chilly, even Vancouver cherry tree?? I just need a food pack so that I can go on this journey of my life.

Maybe it’s a poisonous lunch box that I am taking, but at least I know it tastes good…

A song for the new year
-—For my seemingly endless writing on Mudan
Breaking through the soil,
shoots the seed of the tree
Sun-air-dew and it grows
And wildly without a leaf

I study it close and keen,
Knowing that I look not
at the Jack’s bean

Touching its bough and seeing apparition
Frozen on my lip the unasked question
What is it like --
The curse of your verdurous penetration?

As no reply I hear or encounter
Then my tree, or the tree of stupidity
back I go and sit under.

Xiu Wang : 03 Jan 2008 03:02 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Mosquito

------in memory of my “lovely” night at zhuhai

Too much Gnarls
I must have listened;
Too many monsters
therefore appeared:

Fire dragons guarding the castle
haunted by the weeping sorrow

An old vampire whines
And a werewolf sneers

No princes nor Shrek the third
Her fate is ruined
Until aside I turned , and everything
receded

wide-open eyes, is for the daylight,
I will then, just keep them closed.

It is enough to smell in the dark,
my trimphant blood.

Xiu Wang : 28 Mar 2007 15:02 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Still…

Winds get lost,
Not the kite
Clouds grow dim,
Not the sky

Flowers fade out,
Not the spring
I wake up,
Not the dream

Xiu Wang : 05 Jan 2007 16:27 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

no name

In the early spring,
Did you hear the snow weeping
as you two passed that field
vast and wild

I am actually fine

Under the tears
of the crystal ice
Grass must be growing on this field
vast and wild

Xiu Wang : 27 Dec 2006 16:42 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

For Siyi

The coffee
in the dark dark
night
I drink

The value
with the hard hard
fact
I swallow

CHOCKED
and I ask

Do I have to live
this sad sad
life with things that I
never and ever can
digest

Xiu Wang : 12 Dec 2006 14:20 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

"bed" vs "pie" again

Follow-up to death of a discipline from XIULU

A friend offered me an brilliant explaination for why the “bed” is a poem while the “pie” is not: in “pie”, everything has been said, and there is no space left at all.
If the “bed” poem is to be rewritten in a “pie”’s way, she believed it would be:
the bed
is shared;
however
the pillow
is not shared
What a disaster…

Xiu Wang : 06 Dec 2006 15:08 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

death of a discipline

I was shocked to read the online discussion recently on Chinese modernist poems. The whole discussion started with the poem which I translate as literally as possible here:
Undoubtedly
The pie I make
Is the best
In the world.
I laughed so hard the first time I read this. No wonder every one wants to be a poet: if poems can be made this way, it seems to be a good career then! I could have written a few this morning:
Unquestionably
The sky outside
Is the greyest
That I’ve ever seen
Or
Indisputably
This poem I wrote
Is the worst
Of all.

I can not help going back to my favourite quote of Chesterman: appalling translations are nevertheless translations. While I am wrestling with the blurring line between very appalling translations and creative writings, literary critics seem to be equally bothered with what makes a poem a poem.
Last weekend in the conference Translation and Conflict II in Manchester, I was quite stirred by two lines of an African Poem, which is translated into English:
The bed,
Is shared;
The pillow
Is not.
What makes a bed/pillow, but not a pie poetic to me? Is that decision finally something very personal? I really do not know.
I can only hope it’s not. Otherwise I guess another round of “death of the discipline” will just prevail.

Xiu Wang : 22 Nov 2006 11:25 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Trackbacks (1) |  Report a problem

i walk in the shadow

I walked in the
shadow of the clouds
It crept after me as
the wind rose

I walked in the
shadow of the wind
can’t see but feel
petals were smashing at me

I walked in the
shadow of the flower
UP there
It was blooming
I lost my way
down here

Xiu Wang : 10 Oct 2006 02:16 |  Tags: Poetry |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem