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Xi Chuan (author), Lucas Klein (translator),Β Bloom & Other Poems, New Directions. 2022. 204 pgs.
In a conversation with the author Xu Zhiyuan, included in the final pages of this volume, Xi Chuan refers to the transformation his own poems underwent in the early 1990s as a βshedding-of-the-skin process, a switching-out-your-bonesβ. It was a time of great personal tragedy for Xi Chuan, for whom the deaths of two admired friends in 1989βthe poets Haizi and Luo Yiheβportended a break with the influences of his past. But in poetic terms, too, it was an βexcruciatingβ journey: to leave behind the slogan-laden 1980s, along with the venerated masters and icons of that era, and learn to make something new of the amnesiac and consumerist era that China was then heading into.
To grasp the poems in Bloom thus requires us to step with Xi Chuan into the ferment of the 1990s and early 2000s: a period torn between the logics of cultural preservation and trade-fuelled prosperity, when what he calls a βrevolutionary youth cultureβ transformed the media, while capital from Southeast Asia and the West provided a boost for the visual arts. To these upheavals, Lucas Kleinβs Foreword adds the fascinating backdrop of a late-1990s debate among Chinaβs literary community that βdivided poets into camps of βIntellectualβ and βPopulistβ writersββwithin which Xi Chuan, by his own telling, found himself in the βIntellectualβ camp but came to insist on the richness of the quotidian in his writing. Armed with this sensibility, Xi Chuan entered the 2000s determined not to let the decadeβs βmarvels and absurditiesβ go to waste, by allowing his poetic voice to absorb the shape-shifting discourses of Chinaβs internet era as well as the historical detritus left in its wake.
What results is a deliberate, sometimes overwhelming hybridity that leaps from every page and provides the central motif for Bloomβs title poem, dated to the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 2014. To βbloomβ, Xi Chuan suggests, is to inhabit the possibilities of the age as a new way of being and expression, as if βgiving sight and sound to the deaf and blind // and learning how to be intoxicatedβ. With a nod to the historical echoes of Maoβs ill-fated Hundred Flowers Campaign, he leans into the absurdity of the idea that such spontaneity could occur by fiat (βI order you to bloom that is request you to bloom / I humbly implore youβ), before revealing in a dramatic flourish that the call to bloom is taken up by a multitude of voices across the past and future: βbloom said Liang Shanbo to Zhu Yingtaiβ (the Butterfly Lovers of classical fame), while light years away, βthe guy fixing computers on Alpha Hydrae says you should bloomβ (βBloomβ).
Kleinβs stripped-back syntax lends an anarchic urgency to these injunctions, capturing the βpleasurableβ, βcrazyβ, βunstoppableβ quality that fellow poet Ouyang Jianghe praised in Xi Chuanβs original poem. Similar rhythms are also deployed in other long, declamatory pieces like βAbstruse Thoughts at the Panjiayuan Antiques Marketβ and βOn Readingβ. Meanwhile, prose poems such as βTravel Diaryβ and βRandom Manhattan Thoughtsβ read as peripatetic, dream-like excursions across the landscape of the poetβs mind. At their most expansive, these pieces riff off the startling visuals produced by Chinaβs breakneck development, pausing only to reach into the past for references that cast these scenes in a sideways light. In one typical jump-cut, Xi Chuan juxtaposes the thought of βThomas More [β¦] locking up prisoners in shackles of goldβ with an image fished from the slipstream of the everyday: βone sour guy is walking up to me / smiling, he flashes a gold tooth, like I know himβ βGoldenβ). Another poem, whose title contains a pun on his pen name, delivers a sardonic take on the poetβs own eclectic obsessions: βEach and every Audi A6 is diving to the Han Dynasty. / Newly produced old tricycles come with electric motorsβ (βTravels in Xichuan Provinceβ).
It is thanks to Kleinβs efforts, of course, that Anglophone readers can even begin to understand some of these references. But Klein occasionally goes out of his way to render these poems accessible, for instance translating βηΎεΊ¦ηΎη§β (an encyclopaedia run by Chinese internet giant Baidu) as the more familiar βWikipediaβ (which is blocked in China), and βιΈ‘ζ±€β (βchicken soupβ) as the distinctly American βchicken soup for the soulβ; in both cases, an unvarnished term might have sufficed. At other points, conversely, Klein preserves the literal meaning of common Chinese expressions that would have read more intuitively in their idiomatic sense: the phrase βδΊζΉεζ΅·β, shorthand for βall parts of the countryβ, is directlyβand somewhat clunkilyβrendered as βthe five lakes and four seasβ. Granted, Klein assures us of Xi Chuanβs own close involvement in these translations, and it is not unimaginable that a poet as ecumenical as he should intend for these poems to travel as fully as possible into their readersβ contexts. But they remain somewhat puzzling choices nonetheless.
Towards the end of the collection, Klein includes a small clutch of Xi Chuanβs poems from the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, his most recent in this volume. At first, one wonders how a poet with such an observant roving eye might be hemmed in by the realities of lockdown. But the increasingly Kafkaesque public health restrictions turn out to be perfect fodder for his gifts. We find him grousing good-naturedly at the strict controls (βIβll wait a whole month before sneezing and coughing; if Iβm still not allowed to cough in a month, then Iβll put it off for another monthβ), while calling out the root of hisβand othersββunease (βThe eyes keeping track of the spread of the pandemic are also keeping track of public opinion and the spread of pornographyβ) (βAll Right, All Rightβ). Look hard enough, and historical echoes abound for the absurdities that surround him: βwear a facemask to eat, wear a facemask to smoke or drink, wear a facemask to make love, wear a facemask to spit, wear a facemask to die. The surrealists come back to haunt us again and againβ (βOde to Facemasksβ).
The final poem of Bloom, though, takes a different tack. For a poet who has said that βyou canβt just write your own interiorityβ, the experience of a world being forced to fit within four walls seems to have prompted Xi Chuan to do just that. While it veers, like many other pieces within this book, toward the philosophical (βinside each human is darkness, obviouslyβthereβs no starlight / everybodyβs dreams gradually disappear inside themβ), the poem dwells too on what each of us can ultimately be stripped down to, in the earthiest sense (βinside each human is either a village or else a pool of piss or a pile of shitβ). Itβs an apt coda to a book so eager, so ravenous for all that life has to offer, that it comes to rest on that most fundamental of human expressions, breath itself: βjust as inside human disaster is scheming is misjudgement is foolishness / or inside breath is panic is sorrow is deathβ (βInsideβ). At the heart of all our blooming, the poet seems to say, this is what itβs always been about. Β Β
How to cite:Β Kwek, Theophilus. βNew Skin, Old Bones: Xi ChuanβsΒ Bloom & Other Poems.βΒ Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 3 Oct. 2023,Β chajournal.blog/2023/10/03/new-skin.
Theophilus Kwek is the author of four poetry collections, two of which were shortlisted for the Singapore Literature Prize. His work has been published inΒ The Guardian, Times Literary Supplement, Mekong Review,Β and elsewhere; and performed at the Royal Opera House. His latest collection isΒ Moving HouseΒ (Carcanet Press).Β Β