The Flowering Of Modern Chinese Poetry

The May Fourth Movement launched an era of turmoil and transformation in China, as Western ideas and education encroached on the Confucian traditions at the root of Chinese society. The Republican period (1919–49) witnessed an outpouring of poetry in a form and style new to China, written in the common people’s language, baihua ("plain speech"). The New Poetry broke with the centuries-old tradition of classical poetry and its intricate forms, and the rise of China’s modern poetry reflects the rise of modern China. The Flowering of Modern Chinese Poetry presents English translations of over 250 poems by fifty poets, including a rich selection of poetry by women writers, to provide a nuanced picture of the rapid development of vernacular verse in China from its emergence during the May Fourth Movement, through the years of the Japanese invasion, to the Communist victory in the Civil War in 1949. Michel Hockx introduces the historical and literary contexts of the various schools of vernacular poetry that developed throughout the period – the pioneers, formalists, symbolists, "peasants and soldiers" poets, and Shanghai poets of the late 1940s. Each selection of verse begins with a biographical sketch of the author’s life and literary career, including their roles in the Civil War and Japanese occupation. Introducing English readers to master poets who are virtually unknown to Western audiences, this anthology presents a collection of verse written in an age of struggle that attests to the courage, sensitivity, and imagination of the Chinese people.

The May Fourth Movement launched an era of turmoil and transformation in China, as Western ideas and education encroached on the Confucian traditions at the root of Chinese society. The Republican period (1919-49) witnessed an outpouring of poetry in a form and style new to China, written in the common people's language, baihua ("plain speech"). The New Poetry broke with the centuries-old tradition of classical poetry and its intricate forms, and the rise of China's modern poetry reflects the rise of modern China. The Flowering of Modern Chinese Poetry presents English translations of over 250 poems by fifty poets, including a rich selection of poetry by women writers, to provide a nuanced picture of the rapid development of vernacular verse in China from its emergence during the May Fourth Movement, through the years of the Japanese invasion, to the Communist victory in the Civil War in 1949. Michel Hockx introduces the historical and literary contexts of the various schools of vernacular poetry that developed throughout the period - the pioneers, formalists, symbolists, "peasants and soldiers" poets, and Shanghai poets of the late 1940s. Each selection of verse begins with a biographical sketch of the author's life and literary career, including their roles in the Civil War and Japanese occupation. Introducing English readers to master poets who are virtually unknown to Western audiences, this anthology presents a collection of verse written in an age of struggle that attests to the courage, sensitivity, and imagination of the Chinese people.

An anthology of Chinese poetry, featuring 150 selections drawn from throughout two thousand years, each presented in original Chinese characters, coordinated with word-for-word annotations, and followed by an English translation.

This book, first published in 1947, is an anthology of Chinese poetry from a period when it was entering an entirely new world, where all or nearly all the ancient poetic traditions were being cast aside. No longer could Chinese poetry be regarded as the graceful accomplishment of retired sages: the new voices were powerful, realistic, even brutal.

Chinese prose poetry today is engaged with a series of questions that are fundamental to the modern Chinese language: What is prose? What is it good for? How should it look and sound? Millions of Chinese readers encounter prose poetry every year, both in the most official of state-sponsored magazines and in the unorthodox, experimental work of the avant-garde. Recite and Refuse makes the answers to our questions about prose legible by translating, surveying, and interpreting prose poems, and by studying the people, politics, and contexts that surround the writing of prose poetry. Author Nick Admussen argues that unlike most genres, Chinese prose poems lack a distinct size or shape. Their similarity to other prose is the result of a distinct process in which a prose form is recited with some kind of meaningful difference—an imitation that refuses to fully resemble its source. This makes prose poetry a protean, ever-changing group of works, channeling the language of science, journalism, Communist Party politics, advertisements, and much more. The poems look vastly different as products, but are made with a similar process. Focusing on the composition process allows Admussen to rewrite the standard history of prose poetry, finding its origins not in 1918 but in the obedient socialist prose poetry of the 1950s. Recite and Refuse places the work of state-sponsored writers in mutual relationship to prose poems by unorthodox and avant-garde poets, from cadre writers like Ke Lan and Guo Feng to the border-crossing intellectual and poet Liu Zaifu to experimental artists such as Ouyang Jianghe and Xi Chuan. The volume features never-before seen English translations that range from the representative to the exceptional, culminating with Ouyang Jianghe’s masterpiece “Hanging Coffin.” Reading across the spectrum enables us to see the way that artists interact with each other, how they compete and cooperate, and how their interactions, as well as their creations, continuously reinvent both poetry and prose.