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Xi Chuan (author), Lucas Klein (translator), Bloom & Other Poems, New Directions. 2022. 204 pgs.

Back in 1973, Harold Bloom imagined a literary landscape where poets looked back upon the poetic tradition with a sense of hesitation and fear. This anxiety of influence would so grip modern poets that nearly all modern poetry would be weak and derivative of their precursors. The shadows cast by the greats of the past would inhibit the ability of current poets to carve out a place in this imagined pantheon and to operate in the poetic realm on their own terms. In Bloom & Other Poems, Xi Chuan offers a perfect counterargument to this type of criticism.

The poet reflects on predecessors in part 15 of “Travel Diary”:

Someone has used this bathtub. But no problem—someone has handled the money in my hand, and someone has praised the beauty of the moon overhead. […] and so bathe in a bathtub with   fortitude and restraint. But as soon as I’m restrained, the cockroaches are going to come creeping out of their nooks and crannies. But no problem—you could count yourself lucky there aren’t any mice (81).

So even when a poet considers everyone who has done a thing before him, whatever that trepidation might manifest itself as, we should move forward with “fortitude and restraint” and remember that it could always be worse, at least there is a bathtub.

However, these predecessors aren’t unknown to Xi Chuan. He places himself squarely in their midst, strolling along easily and seemingly carefree in their presence. In fact, there is so much name-dropping in these pages that it is clearly a feature of his poetic approach. For example, while contemplating about authenticity in “Abstruse Thoughts at the Panjiayuan Antiques Market” (41-61), he asks:

            Are two-thousand-year-old real antiques even more real than two-hundred-
                      year-old antiques?
            Are counterfeit antiques from twenty years ago still counterfeit today?
            “The sun in the meridian may be the sun in decline,” said Huizi.
            Don’t you feel ashamed asking all these metaphysical questions in the din of a
                      market? (41).

Without pomp or circumstance, Xi Chuan brings in a Warring States philosopher and slides one of his Ten Theses right into the middle of the conversation. In this poem alone, he mentions 27 people, drawn from historic leaders and scholars to a present-day antique vendor. Keats, Schiller, and Heidegger also make appearances. While he calls the antique market “a trash heap of 1200 eras piled on top of each other”, it is clear that he is there to help us find value amidst all the junk and knock-offs (47), and he’s not afraid to conjure up dozens of his predecessors to do it.

This poem highlights one of the key themes that runs throughout the book: authenticity. In “Stupid Words”, he tells us: “You can’t really be yourself, but you can be a hundred thousand other people” (89). He then suggests trying to be the historically suspect Lei Feng:

                        Many people have gone, but how many of them were ever themselves?
                        But it might still be possible to be someone who used to be:
                        for instance, Lei Feng,
                        and if that doesn’t work then be Lei Feng’s co-worker,
                        […]
                        and if that doesn’t work then be someone who doubts Lei Feng’s deeds,
                        and if that doesn’t work then be someone who’s never even heard of Lei Feng 

Xi Chuan explores the notions of personae and authentic selves: “So many people have gone but you want to be yourself” (89). He seems to raise a question as to what it might actually mean to be a self among the near infinity of those who have come before us, or why someone should feel uneasy in their own skin. If we cannot be comfortable with who we are, why not operate as the mask and find some comfort there?

In “The One Who Happened”, he maps out the life of a protagonist who met or didn’t meet with various circumstances (Hitler, sand storms, not reading Western literature . . . ). The character does not struggle against situations or forces that are not presented to him and accepts what life is giving him. The end result of all of these non-struggles is that “[h]e has experienced a second-rate happiness, and happened to be encouraged by the spring breeze” (15). It is clear that this character would not know his happiness is second-rate, and it begs the question if that even matters at all, as he is able to appreciate small things like a spring breeze.  

But questions of authenticity run throughout the poems. They appear again in “Loquaciousness, or: Thought Report” (147-75): “As long as a tape recorder has batteries it can substitute for a real throat hawking goods into perpetuity” (155). Much like the twenty-year-old counterfeit mentioned earlier, the question remains: at what point does a fake become genuine? In “Random Manhattan Thoughts”, he offers mathematics to help determine truth from falsity (101-11). Three truths make something false, and three false things become a truth (105-7). It would seem the divisions between truth and falsity, authenticity and fakeness, are at the least fluid and quite possibly not meaningful.

In “On Reading”, Xi Chuan details how many people tend to over-pursue something to the neglect of other things and describes the consequences (119-25):

                        Some people have read too many Chinese books, too few Western books
                        Some people have read too few Chinese books, too many Western books

                        […]

                        Some people talk to books as if the authors were their close friends
                        Some people don’t talk to authors but bow to them as if making sacrifices to
                                  their ancestors 

Reading surfaces often in the text. “Someone who has memorised the poems of Li Bai and Du Fu backward and forward doesn’t know poetry; everyone who raises Wang Wei and Cold Mountain above Li Bai and Du Fu must have graduated in Manhattan” (111).

We cannot escape our predecessors. Where we place value will lead to consequences. Many are unable to be their true selves and must wear masks to get by. These things would seem to point to Harold Bloom being right about the state of anxiety that we should find ourselves in. Xi Chuan disagrees. The opening poem “Bloom” is an invitation to joy, with the poet modelling how to achieve it (3-13):

                        to bloom is liberation to bloom is revolution
                        the universe did not begin with a bang but a bloom

                        […]

                        bloom to counteract residual fear just release your fantasies of your other you

                        […]

                        bloom till you’re ecstatic from the valley of death from the village of rejection
                        from the crevasse of the city from the central square 

As he recommends near the end of the book, “Burp and fart and recite Tang poetry. Yeah, that’s the way to do it” (173).

Finishing out the book is a transcription of a lengthy 2017 interview between Xi Chuan and Xu Zhiyuan (181-204). This interview has Xi recounting his experiences coming up in the Beijing poetic scenes of the 80s and 90s, his thoughts on the Chinese art market, his relationship to literature and history, and where he places himself in all of this. This offers a very valuable insight to his times and how he perceives his work and career, and is a great way to round out this collection.

Lucas Klein has done a great job of giving us a very readable translation of Xi Chuan’s long lines and meandering discourses. I first encountered Klein’s work in his translation of Mang Ke, and the work presented here is equally assured and artful.                     

How to cite: Horton, David Harrison.“A Genuine Fake? Xi Chuan’s Bloom & Other Poems.” Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 7 Aug. 2023, chajournal.blog/2023/08/07/genuine.

David Harrison Horton is a Beijing-based writer, artist, editor and curator. He is author of the chapbooks Pete Hoffman Days (Pinball) and BeiHai (Nanjing Poetry). He edits the poetry zine SAGINAW. [All contributions by David Harrison Horton.]

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