New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry (PDF)

CHRISTOPHER LUPKE is Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature, Washington State University, USA.

"The first step in understanding contemporary Chinese poetry, argues Michelle Yeh in her wide-ranging chapter in Lupke s excellent collection, is to renounce whatever a priori notion of Chineseness we might hold and read the actual poetry, whether from Taiwan and Hong Kong or from Mainland China, here translated. Now that the U.S. and China are increasingly in contact, it is high time for Western readers to come to terms with the lyric of such notable poets as Ya Xian, Luo Fu, and Xia Yu (from Taiwan), Gu Cheng, Yu Jian, and Wang Xiaoni from the PRC. The essays here included are scholarly and critically sophisticated: they open up genuinely new spaces." - Marjorie Perloff, Stanford University

"This collection will certainly prove to be a highly valuable scholarly resource for anyone interested in the explosion of creative freedom and variety in Chinese and Taiwanese poetry of recent decades. Beyond that, it eloquently addresses the eternal struggle between the forces of creative openness and those of authoritarianism and repressive orthodoxy. Vital information for us all in these, or any, times." - Michael Palmer

"This is a very welcome addition to the scholarship on contemporary Chinese literature, art and society. Not only does it bring new critical attention to Chinese poetry of the late 20th century, but it does so in such a way as to challenge the hegemonic position of narrative (or anti-narrative) in contemporary literary production. Grounded in a series of close readings, arguments range from detailed philology to deep theoretical thrusts that contend for another type of knowledge, consciousness, and memory that is unavailable to dominant genres of fiction and film. These authors show us an "alternative mode" of knowing and remembering, a literature as contemporary as film and as Chinese as classical poetry." - Joseph R. Allen, University of Minnesota